I’m Tim Ekl, a Seattle-area software developer. I’m fascinated by languages, both computer and human; sometimes I do math recreationally; and I love both a good album and a good coffee. I’ve been writing don’t panic since 2010, albeit less and less frequently.
Work
In January 2019 I started work at FiLMiC, where I’m the iOS development lead. At FiLMiC, I’ve written Swift and Objective-C for each of our four primary iOS apps; Ruby and Python for scripting; and node and Rust for miscellaneous Web services.
In the course of my work at FiLMiC, I’ve shipped or owned the following features and systems:
- The Clean HDMI Output feature for Filmic Pro, the flagship camera app, enabling a wide range of broadcast and remote workflows during the 2020 pandemic
- Support for Dolby Vision capture in the iPhone 12 series
- The internal CI system: a set of on-premise Macs, managed with ansible, for building and deploying beta iOS apps
- Code review for most other contributions into every iOS app
Prior to FiLMiC, I was a developer on the OmniFocus team at The Omni Group. At Omni, I wrote Objective-C and Swift for our apps; Ruby for scripting; and Go for Web services. My major efforts at Omni included the OmniFocus 2 redesign on both Mac and iOS, as well as the sync, attachment storage, and push notification systems.
I’ve also spent time at Sandia National Laboratories, working on Python software for mathematical modeling. At Sandia, I spent much of my efforts on introducing an automated test framework and continuous integration practices.
Community & Outreach
In fall 2013, I also began teaching in the University of Washington’s certificate program for iOS Application Development. Over the next two years, I taught different aspects of the iOS development process to five cohorts of students. One of my proudest moments at UW was hearing a student announce that he’d submitted his app to the App Store during the last week of class.
I became involved in the local Xcoders developer meetup very shortly after moving to Seattle in 2012. Since then, I’ve given talks about provisioning, UIViewController containment, and App Transport Security – mostly an extension of my post about the same. In 2016, I also began helping to coordinate the group – drop me a line on Twitter if you’d like to speak on a technical topic.
In my free time, I’m also an occasional contributor on StackOverflow, and I maintain a few sample projects over on GitHub. Many of those projects reflect work done to submit Radars to Apple, in the course of my day-to-day work.
Education
Prior to living in Seattle, I attended Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, where I primarily studied computer science. I graduated with a B.S. in 2011 and an M.E.M. in 2012, and in the spring of 2015, I was lucky enough to return as a guest instructor and teach an iOS development course over the internet.
I consider ongoing education and professional development a critical part of a software development career, and since starting at Omni, have attended WWDC, CocoaConf, and 360|iDev, among others.