Walter Bright is an American programmer known for decades of work building compilers. His own home page describes him as “an expert in all areas of compiler technology, including front ends, optimizers, code generation, interpreter engines and runtime libraries,” reflecting a career spent on the parts of programming that most developers never see directly.
His best-known early achievement was Zortech C++, which his site lists as “the first native C++ compiler.” Earlier C++ implementations translated C++ source into C as an intermediate step; Bright’s compiler instead generated object code directly. The product later carried the names Symantec C++ and Digital Mars C++ as it changed hands, and his resume also lists related work such as Zorland C and Datalight C.
Bright is also “the creator and first implementer of the D programming language,” along with the Digital Mars D compiler and the D language specification. D grew out of his long experience with C and C++ and his desire to keep their native performance while cleaning up the language design.
Across his career he has implemented compilers for several other languages and has written and spoken widely about compiler construction, making him one of the more prolific independent compiler authors in the field.