Erich Gamma is Swiss

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

 computer scientist

Computer scientist

A computer scientist is a scientist who has acquired knowledge of computer science, the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their application in computer systems....

 and co-author of the influential Software engineering

Software engineering

Software Engineering is the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software, and the study of these approaches; that is, the application of engineering to software...

 textbook, Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

Design Patterns

Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software is a software engineering book describing recurring solutions to common problems in software design. The book's authors are Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson and John Vlissides with a foreword by Grady Booch. The authors are...

. He co-wrote the JUnit

JUnit

JUnit is a unit testing framework for the Java programming language. JUnit has been important in the development of test-driven development, and is one of a family of unit testing frameworks collectively known as xUnit that originated with SUnit....

 software testing framework with Kent Beck

Kent Beck

Kent Beck is an American software engineer and the creator of the Extreme Programming and Test Driven Development software development methodologies. Beck was one of the 17 original signatories of the Agile Manifesto in 2001....

 and led the design of the Eclipse platform's Java

Java (programming language)

Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...

 Development Tools (JDT). He also worked on the IBM Rational Jazz project.

He joined Microsoft's

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

 Visual Studio team in 2011 and will lead a development lab in Zürich

Zürich

Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...

, Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

.

Interviews and Presentations

In an interview in 2005, Erich 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.

Written

• Erich Gamma on Flexibility and Reuse
• Design Principles from Design Patterns
• Patterns and Practice
• Eclipse's Culture of Shipping

Audio

• Erich Gamma on Patterns, JUnit, Eclipse and Jazz (at Software Engineering Radio)

Video

• Keynote by Erich Gamma from QCon London 2008
• Interview with Erich Gamma from QCon London 2008