Bill Hall has worked for many years as a developer and consultant on Microsoft Windows and Win32 platforms with experience going back to Windows 1.0, which he ported at the systems level to AT&T/Olivetti computers. In addition to working as an applications programmer throughout his computing career, he turned his attention to language and locale issues beginning with his 1992 Microsoft Systems Journal article on Windows National Language Support and his 1993 articles on Win32 internationalization. Over the years he has taken a number of products into European and Far East languages for Novell and other companies. He continues to write on the engineering aspects of creating world-ready software with most articles appearing in Multilingual Computing, where he also serves on its editorial board.

In past lives, Bill has been a military and civilian aviator, an associate professor of mathematics at the University of Pittsburgh, and served for three years as an associate editor with Mathematical Reviews.