The AWS Developers Podcast

Native Speed, Modern Safety: Swift for Backend Development

Jan 29, 2026
Sebastien Stormacq, Principal Developer Advocate and Swift specialist at AWS, shares his work on Swift for server-side use. He discusses Swift’s native compilation, memory safety without GC, modern concurrency, and why it fits serverless on AWS. Conversation highlights frameworks, tooling like Swift Bedrock, real-world migrations, and how teams can start building backend services with Swift.
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INSIGHT

Open Source Fueled Cross-Platform Growth

  • Swift is open source and tied to LLVM, enabling rapid cross-platform growth beyond Apple.
  • Official toolchains and libraries now target Linux, Windows, Android, and even small devices, widening adoption.
ADVICE

Prefer Compiled CLIs For Reliability

  • Consider building command-line tools in Swift to get compiled, self-contained binaries instead of scripts.
  • Use Swift for CLIs when you want performance and no external runtime dependency.
INSIGHT

Native Compilation And Predictable Concurrency

  • Swift compiles to native binaries so it starts fast and uses little memory compared to VM languages.
  • Its compiler-enforced concurrency and strong typing reduce runtime errors and make server code more predictable.
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