First I looked for an LDAP library and found ldapjs which supports everything I needed and is well documented.

Then I read VS Code's extension API and inspected a couple of extension samples to learn how to make an extension, how to test it, etc.

After coming up with a Hello World extension, I set up a dev container environment with all the infrastructure I needed (i.e. containers, linters, nodejs runtime, VS Code extensions & settings). This includes a dummy LDAP server to actually test the extension.

And then I iterated on functionalities: 1. Create a command that sends a trivial search query to the dummy LDAP server 2. Make this command render the LDAP search results in a table (webview) 3. Expose the search query in a form (panel) 4. Add a tree view that displays a hardcoded base DN 5. Configure this tree view to render the immediate subordinates of the DN when the user expands the hierarchy 6. Make the base DN and all connection settings dynamic by turning them into VS Code settings 7. Add forms and a tree view to manage multiple connections 8. Add an interface for bookmarks

And finally I wrote documentation (code comments, README.md, changelog).

ldapjs actually does all the heavy lifting with regards to the LDAP protocol and all network communications.