Zachary Waldowski
Software Developer at Big Nerd Ranch
Atlanta, Georgia, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolZachary Waldowski is a seasoned software developer with 15 years of experience building iOS and macOS applications and libraries from Atlanta. Currently at Big Nerd Ranch, he specializes in Cocoa and UIKit development and has a track record of shipping robust client-facing features as well as maintaining developer tooling. An active open-source contributor, Zachary has improved widely used projects like Sparkle and libffi, modernizing macOS compatibility and cross-architecture build behavior, and expanded popular Objective-C utilities in BlocksKit. He brings a pragmatic focus on memory safety and forward compatibility—refactoring APIs for ARC, fixing subtle storage mutations, and adding Sendable conformance to ensure thread-safety. Comfortable across full-stack and backend tasks, he pairs deep systems-level understanding with polished UI work. Colleagues describe him as a tireless, detail-oriented problem-solver who’s been tinkering with computers his whole life and “does the best imitation” of himself in code.
15 years of coding experience
7 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Computer Science, Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Computer Science at Georgia Institute of TechnologyCoastal Carolina University
English
Github Skills (28)
application-framework10
json10
objective-c10
ios10
protocol-buffers10
memory-management10
app-framework10
blocks10
software-update10
c1110
c1710
web-framework10
swift10
macos10
uikit10
Programming languages (14)
Github contributions (5)
BlocksKit/BlocksKit
May 2011 - Jun 2017
The Objective-C block utilities you always wish you had.
Role in this project:
iOS Developer
iOS DeveloperContributions:794 commits, 18 PRs, 20 pushes in 6 years 2 months
Contributions summary:Zachary primarily contributed to the BlocksKit library by expanding its functionality with new block-based extensions for UIKit classes, specifically for UIActionSheet, UIAlertView, UIWebView, and several UIControl components. They also refactored existing APIs for better memory management and updated the codebase to comply with ARC (Automatic Reference Counting). These changes demonstrate the user's focus on improving the utility and safety of the BlocksKit framework, particularly in the context of UIKit development.
objective-c
git-up/GitUp
Jun 2017 - Dec 2020
The Git interface you've been missing all your life has finally arrived.
Role in this project:Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:1 review, 23 commits, 21 PRs in 3 years 6 months
Contributions summary:Zachary primarily focused on fixing bugs and improving the GitUp application's functionality. They addressed issues related to memory management, macOS compatibility, and user interface aspects such as the welcome window. Furthermore, the user updated the project's build configuration, including bumping the deployment target and updating the clang-format version. These changes contribute to the application's stability, usability, and overall maintenance.
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