An Ephemeral Contest to Learn Swift by Doing
The Summer of Swift came from conversations at SF’s Swift Language User Group. The idea is that many developers learn by practice, and especially by building big apps. In essence, the Summer is just trying to provide objectives and a framework to motivate developers to build a Swift app this Summer.
Participants in the Summer work on a project alone or in teams. To enter, submit a pull request to this repo by July 15th. Your PR should add a description of your project to the projects/ folder, following the template in projects/TEMPLATE.md; it should also add an entry to the “Big Board” section in this README.
The only rule of the Summer of Swift is that you must edit your project file at least once every 2 weeks with an update on your progress & what you have learned so far. Projects who fail to do so will be crossed off from the “Big Board”.
If your update falls around one of the meetings of the SLUG or any other similar meetup, we encourage you to give your update in person. At the SLUG, we’ll give every participating project a 5-minute lightning talk at every meeting to demo your progress & share what you’ve learned. If you cannot present in person, you can share your progress via a blog, github, twitter, youtube, etc.
The contest will run until September 30th. We will conclude with a 2-hour meetup in San Francisco entirely devoted to the participants that toughed it out through the Summer. We expect to be able to fly in the people behind at least one (if not more) of the best projects outside San Francisco. Everybody will show off their apps and summarize all that they’ve learned about Swift over the Summer. The event will be recorded and shared on YouTube.
No, you can compete from anywhere as long as you send updates to this repo regularly.
Anything you want that helps you deepen your understanding of Swift: apps, games, libraries, tooling, documentation — anything is fair!
The bi-monthly update requirement is just there to encourage people to stay engaged and stick with their Swift project over a meaningful period of time. We understand that people have work, vacation, family and other things that may not let them adhere to an agressive learning schedule! Any of the following would be a good update
- Github push to your repo
- Blogpost about something you have learned so far
- Video or tech talk you’ve given about your app
We’ll accept any other signs of life from participants :)
If you’re interested in offering prizes, motivators or help (books, online courses, etc.) to the contestants in the Summer of Swift, please email arwa@realm.io. Above all the Summer is about learning, so prizes may not be a good fit, but we do understand that sometimes motivators help ;) At the very least, you’ll get bragging rights and an eternity of posterity by being one of the few names not crossed off The Big Board.
Send a pull request to this repo. Your PR must add a file with your project name to the projects/ folder, following the template in projects/TEMPLATE.md + adding an entry to the “Big Board” section below. We ask that all projects enter the contest by July 15th at the latest.
We do want to share a few aggregate updates about other Summer projects, as well as any announcements about prizes, local groups or hacknights by email (using the address in your initial git commit). You can let us know in the PR if you’d rather not receive any updates.
Yes, you can submit PRs requesting to add yourself to an existing project. We’ll ask the original submitter(s) to 👍 it before merging it in.
Absolutely. Here are the cities that host hacknights for the Summer
- San Francisco, the SLUG will organize hacknights devoted to working on Summer projects. Just join the group to be notified of these events.
- Ottawa, Come out to the SLUG-O Hacknights! We’re planning to meet every second Tuesday at 7pm at the Bridgehead at Richmond and Golden. (Depending on the turnout we may revisit the venue.) We thought we’d hold the first one next week – also conveniently July 15th. Keep coming every two weeks and you’ll be sure to keep posting updates on your project. Email svatek@gmail.com for details.
- Uppsala, the 7th of August at 18:00 a hack night will be held somewhere in the city. Email johannesl@46elks.com for details.
- Your city here? If you want to host similar hacknights somewhere else, email tim@realm.io or send a PR so we can add you to this page.
Reach out to Arwa <arwa@realm.io> and Tim <tim@realm.io>
This is the list of all the projects that have been entered. Names that are crossed off missed at least one bi-monthly update.
- Jazzy by @jpsim & @timanglade
- Foursquift by @rodericj & @krishnan-srinivasan
- Nudges by @birarda & @problem
- BlueCap by @troystribling
- Crump by @davecom
- Pinwheel by @kreeger
- StarBridge by @stevethomp
- Pythonic.swift by @practicalswift
- Boris The Blade by @neonichu
- Foggy by @jsvatek
- GatineauVélo by @philippec
- Pressure by @ricburton & @samskiter
- Krate - Create and Destroy by @stephenhaney
- ElksInbox by @johannesl
- Lo1Reader by @ebierman
- The Oakland Post by @aclissold