How did you get started and what is your involvement with the Java Community ?
How long have you been working on Scala ?
Can Scala become a general purpose language and replace Java ?
Why is Scala a more pratical approach to functional programming ?
How do monads fit into the Scala picture ?
How can Java programmers start with Scala ?
Any plans for 'A little Schemer' kind of book ?
Are you involved with David Pollack's 'liftweb' ?
What are applications do you see a perfect fit for Scala ?
Does the JVM as it is now take advantage of the multi-cores with Scala ?
Why is immutability so important in functional programming ?
Where do you stand on adding closures to the Java language ?
What was the idea behind embedding the XML syntax in Scala ?
What has been your strategy for compatibility ?
Scala is a general purpose programming language designed to express common programming patterns in a concise, elegant, and type-safe way. It smoothly integrates features of object-oriented and functional languages. It is also fully interoperable with Java. This interview will give you more information on how Scala was found and what it actually is. This podcast is also made available at the JavaPosse.
Martin Odersky heads the programming research group at EPFL. His research interests cover fundamental as well as applied aspects of programming languages. They include semantics, type systems, programming language design, and compiler construction. The main focus if his work lies in the integration of object-oriented and functional programming. His research thesis is that the two paradigms are just two sides of the same coin and should be unified as much as possible. To prove this he has experimented with a number of language designs, from Pizza to GJ to Functional Nets. He has also influenced the development of Java as a co-designer of Java generics and as the original author of the current javac reference compiler. His current work concentrates on the Scala programming language, which unifies FP and OOP while staying completely interoperable with Java and .NET.
Martin Odersky got his doctorate from ETH Zürich, in 1989. He held research positions at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center from 1989 and at Yale University from 1991. He was then a professor at the Univerisity of Karlsruhe from 1993 and at the University of South Australia from 1997. He joined EPFL as full professor in 1999. He is associate editor of the Journal of Functional Programming and member of IFIP WG 2.8. He was conference chair for ICFP 2000, and program chair for ECOOP 2004 as well as ETAPS/CC 2007.