Compiler History – The Open Source in Your Favorite 1990s First-Person Shooter

​In this episode, our host Karsten Hohage talks with our guests Jack Schueler and Sebastian Wolf about Watcom, a spinoff of the University of Waterloo from the 1980s. Jack, who is one of the founding employees of Watcom, talks about how the Watcom C/C++ project came to be, how it evolved over time, how it was open sourced in 2002, and what it is today. He also shares his personal journey and how he ultimately came to work at SAP. Along the way, we learn a lot about programming over the past five decades and how Watcom played an essential part in the development of Doom and Quake.