Paulo Faria

I've been building software for over two decades. It all started with me being a curious teenager from the depths of the Amazon rainforest in the late 90s who loved playing with video games and console emulators. Two projects from that era basically sealed my fate: Being a huge fan of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater game series and specially its soundtrack, I hacked M.U.G.E.N., a fighting game engine, into a skateboarding game by making the stage the enemy and using hitboxes to detect tricks like grinds. Points were scored by beating up the stage until you "killed" it. I even threw in some physics from school to make characters jump on ramps and fall with proper gravity. Pretty exciting stuff for an inquisitive teenager trying to understand how he could observe, understand and act upon the world around him. Around the same time, as an obnoxious teen protective of my carefully crafted musical identity, I wrote a mIRC script that would broadcast what I was listening to in public chat channels—but here's the kicker, I encrypted the messages with a Caesar cipher so only my equally obnoxious friends with the same script could decode them. Peak teenage gatekeeping behavior that I'm definitely not proud of now. As a musician myself these days, I do my best to share and amplify the artists I love instead of hiding them. Those early experiments showed me just how powerful software could be, which eventually led me to founding the Apple Swift Server Workgroup, creating open source projects like Zewo and GraphQLSwift, and helping shape Swift's structured concurrency features. These days I'm a Founding Engineer at Margins, building iOS apps with SwiftUI and backend systems with TypeScript and Next.js. When I'm not coding, you'll find me hiking, rock climbing, or just soaking up the sun—I'm basically a sun worshipper. Music is still a huge part of my life, both listening and playing, and it keeps me connected to that same creative energy that got me into programming in the first place.

After self-organizing with the major server-side Swift projects like Zewo, Vapor, Perfect and others, culminating in OpenSwift, a community-driven initiative to develop open source APIs for server-side development in Swift, at WWDC 16, I pitched to Ted Kremenek, director of Languages and Runtimes at Apple, for the creation of an Apple-official workgroup focused on the development of open source APIs for server-side development in Swift. Later that year, with additional support from IBM, SSWG was founded.

Open source GraphQL libraries for server-side development in Swift. Graphiti provides a higher-level API for building GraphQL schemas in Swift using a declarative syntax powered by result builders, the same technology used to build SwiftUI. GraphQLSwift also provides a lower-level API that matches the GraphQL spec and mirrors the Javascript canonical implementation of GraphQL. GraphQL and Graphiti are SSWG Incubated packages used by important companies in the Swift ecosystem like PassiveLogic and others.

Zewo was the first open source server-side framework for Swift and was the foundation for many other open source projects in the Swift ecosystem. Venice, a Zewo concurrency framework for Swift, introduced the concept of structured concurrency to the Swift ecosystem and served as inspiration for Swift's own structured concurrency features alongside Trio, a Python concurrency library. Zewo also implemented the first reflection API for Swift, which served as a guide for other reflection libraries in the Swift landscape.

CosmosSwift was an open source project aimed at developing the Cosmos inter-blockchain technology for the Swift ecosystem. Unfortunately, the company backing the project lost funding and the project was discontinued before it could be completed.

At Margins, I developed the iOS book tracking app using SwiftUI with modern practices like structured concurrency and the new observation APIs. Currently, I'm focusing on the backend and internal dashboard app used to manage our catalog of books using Typescript, Next.js and Effect-TS.

At Cooper, a mobile gaming communication app born out of Kevin Hartz's Startup Studio, I was responsible for the architecture, development and testing infrastructure of Cooper's custom networking stack written in Swift. I also developed packethrill, a declarative Swift DSL implemented with result builders, highly inspired by packetdrill, a scripting tool that enables quick, precise tests for entire TCP/UDP/IPv4/IPv6 network stacks, from the system call layer down to the NIC hardware. Rather sadly, the company was shut down prematurely and we did not get permission to open source the networking stack.

At Katalysis, I developed the backend for FeatherFeed app using Swift Server technology. I also kickstarted CosmosSwift, an open source project aimed at developing the Cosmos inter-blockchain technology for the Swift ecosystem. Unfortunately, the company lost funding and the project was discontinued.

At Sense Medical, I developed Cortex, a healthcare iOS/iPadOS app used in New Zealand hospitals with a backend powered by Zewo and Venice. After six years with the company, I decided to leave and look for new challenges.

At WWDC 16, I co-hosted the get together event representing the Open Source Swift corner alongside: • Chris Lattner (Swift, llvm, clang) • Ted Kremenek (Apple Languages and Runtime Manager)

At PUCPR, I lectured server-side Swift development as a substitute teacher.

Podcast hosted by Andrew Madsen and Erica Sadun.

Interview hosted by Fernando Rodríguez.

Podcast hosted by Tales Pinheiro and Gustavo Barbosa.