Erich Gamma

Design leader of Eclipse's Java Development Tools (JDT), Gamma is a Swiss computer scientist and co-author of the best-selling and influential software engineering textbook, "Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software" (Addison-Wesley, 1995). Born in Zürich, Switzerland, he has served as a Distinguished Engineer at IBM Rational Software's Zurich lab and was one of the leaders on the IBM Rational Jazz project. Gamma co-wrote the JUnit software testing framework with Kent Beck and led the design of the Eclipse platform's Java Development Tools (JDT).

He joined Microsoft's Visual Studio team in 2011 and led a development lab in Zürich that developed the "Monaco" suite of components for browser-based development, found in products such as Visual Studio Online, Azure Mobile Services, Azure Web Sites, and the Office 365 Development tools. Gamma is a member of the Gang of Four, which is known for its classical book, "Design Patterns". He also authored or co-authored: "Erich Gamma on Flexibility and Reuse"; Design Principles from Design Patterns; Patterns and Practice; and Eclipse's Culture of Shipping. He has given several interviews and is a well-known speaker on Visual Studio and JavaScript.

In an interview in 2005, Gamma explained: "I think patterns as a whole can help people learn object-oriented thinking: how you can leverage polymorphism, design for composition, delegation, balance responsibilities, and provide pluggable behavior. Patterns go beyond applying objects to some graphical shape example, with a shape class hierarchy and some polymorphic draw method. You really learn about polymorphism when you've understood the patterns. So patterns are good for learning OO and design in general."