New Swift project head Ted Kremenek said to be running the show behind the scenes for some time

Apple senior manager Ted Kremenek has been named as the new lead of the Swift development project, and has apparently been operating in that capacity for some time behind the scenes, according to outgoing head Chris Lattner.

On Jan. 10, Lattner told the Swift Evolution mailing list that he was departing Apple for another opportunity, which turned out to be Tesla. In the email, Lattner announced that Kremenec would be taking over for him as the lead of the Swift project.

"This recognizes the incredible effort he has already been putting into the project," wrote Lattner. "This decision wasn't made lightly, and I want you all to know that I'm still completely committed to Swift."

Lattner clarified the appointment in a second email, saying that Kremenek had been operating in the project lead capacity for some time, behind the scenes.

"Ted has been one of the quiet but incredible masterminds behind Swift (and Clang, and the Clang Static Analyzer) for many years," wrote Lattner in the second email. "His approach and modesty has led many to misunderstand the fact that he has actually been running the Swift team for quite some time (misattributing it to me)."

Kremenek obtained a degree in computer science from UCLA, and a doctorate in Philosophy from Stanford. Kremenec was hired by Apple In 2007, and was the principal architect and original engineer of the Clang Static Analyzer that ultimately ended up in Xcode.

In Sept. 2009 to 2013, Kremenek worked on the LLVM Front-end team. Currently, he is a senior manager of languages and runtimes at Apple, and is is responsible for implementing the programming language support in Apple's compilers for Swift, Objective-C, C, and C++.

Lattner was hired by Tesla, and is the company's new vice president of autopilot software. According to colleagues, Lattner was disillusioned by Apple's "culture of secrecy," which is one of the factors that led to his departure from Apple.

"Apple is a truly amazing place to be able to assemble the skills, imagination, and discipline to pull something like this off," Lattner said about his time at Apple. "Swift is in great shape today, and Swift 4 will be a really strong release with Ted as the Project Lead. "