Martin Odersky talks with Bill Venners about the history that led to the creation of the Scala programming language. Scala, a general-purpose, object-oriented, functional language for the JVM, is the brainchild of Martin Odersky, a professor at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). In the first part of a multi-part interview series, Martin Odersky discusses Scala's history and origins w