I’m excited to participate in Google Summer of Code 2025, and I’m particularly interested in contributing to the Tutorial Mode for Swift in the VS Code Extension project. This project aligns perfectly with my skills and passion for improving Swift’s developer experience.
Why I Want to Work on This
Many users installing the Swift VS Code extension are new to programming. By implementing a guided tutorial mode, we can make learning Swift more interactive and intuitive. I want to help create a structured onboarding experience that includes: Swift Book examples DocC-style tutorials inside VS Code Swift testing & formatting guidance
This can be achieved using VS Code Walkthrough mode or a similar interactive approach like CodeTour to provide step-by-step guidance within the IDE.
Why I’m a Good Fit
I have experience with Swift, TypeScript, and VS Code extension development, making me well-prepared for this project. I’m eager to contribute my skills, learn from the community, and ensure that new Swift developers have a seamless onboarding experience.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on how I can best prepare and refine my approach for this project. Looking forward to your guidance and feedback!
Although I'm intermediate to Swift, I have experience with C++,C, Java, and JavaScript, and I’m eager to learn quickly. A great knowledge of Git and gitHub as well
To get started, I’ve been exploring the Configuration to VS code extentions to familiarize myself with the concept. I also found matthewbastien git and am considering creating something similar.
I have also some other advantages over others:
I have a mac as well, so there will be no compatibility issue too.
Proficient in Vs-code as well as swift, makes to perfect combo for me to contribute to this project
@Douglas_Gregor and @ktoso , I’d love to connect and hear your thoughts on how I can best prepare. Looking forward to your guidance!
Thanks for your post and interest with this project. I think a good starting exercise will be think about what kind of experience you'll want the user to have and come up with ideas for that.
What will the user experience flow will look like - so what screens will the user see and how will they be guided through the initial steps. Will they just see code right away, or will there be some sort of a write up that comes first? What general topics will the tutorials cover? Will they be guided on which buttons to click/commands to run? For example, would it just be text, or would you have an arrow that pops up on VS Code somehow that says "Click this button here". Or would the button glow-up to allow the user to figure out what it is, and possibly also look into the APIs that could allow for this. You could do this with text or also try to do some mockups to get a feel for how things would look.
While doing so I would try to keep in mind that users who use this feature will probably be new to the language/extension (perhaps even VS Code), so they may not even know about DocC or Swift testing, for example, so you may need to have some way that explains what it is and how the extension can help you run it.
Also may be good to think about some general ideas on how to incorporate this into the VS Code extension. Will the tutorial content be hard-coded, or will it be auto generated somehow? We would want to ensure that the tutorial always works when called upon and that it is easy to update when the language/features changes.
In terms of implementation I think the Walkthrough mode and CodeTour extensions are good starting points, and there may be other extensions/tutorials you can look to as well. You can check out the VS Code marketplace or tutorials for other languages (or even things like vimtutor) and hopefully get some inspiration from them.
Hope this helps, and looking forward to see what ideas you come up with. It seems like you've already mentioned some in the previous post about this project which is great to see.
Thank you, @rbenegal , for taking the time to respond to this post. I have noted down the necessary features and functionality you explained, and I have already started working on the flow diagrams along with other required diagrams to present everything clearly.
Alongside this, I am also focusing on making the extension more user-friendly so that even a newbie can understand how it works, ensuring it is beginner-friendly. I am also exploring the VS Code Marketplace for reference.
I have some great ideas to enhance the VS Code extension and make the tutorial more engaging. However, I feel that it may not be desirable to share these ideas publicly. I would prefer to share them with you either personally or through my GSoC proposal.
My Interest in Tutorial Mode for Swift in the VS Code Extension 
Why I Want to Work on This
Swift Book examples 
Why I’m a Good Fit