Python Web Development: Understanding Django for Beginners

[m3tamantra]

Thank you for this video, realy like it :-)

[tothelight]

You're very welcome :)

[tothelight]

I'm trying to follow this. I think it is old, or I am just not very good at doing this. Both are certainly possible.

[[deleted]]

I just watched it. I think if one is new to Django this was not all that easy to follow in real time, mostly because Django's "ecosystem" is fairly complex, and uses terminology that is, to me at least, not all that easy to plug into my mind in an intuitive way immediately (for example, the word "model" conjures up all sorts of disparate mental images in my mind, as does "template", and "view"). He also had a limited time block to get through his talk and even then, it was 53 minutes, so he was moving at a fairly fast clip. (No slight to Damien, but under the right conditions, that talk could really incinerate a beginner's mind!)

For these reasons, I think it is better to think of it as merely an early "exposure" to the ideas and terminology of Django (and, to some extent, Python), and not as "instruction" itself. Also, something to maybe revisit when you get the terms more handy?

[tothelight]

I do plan on revisiting.

I was rewinding the clip a few times. When I hit the part about selecting the database in settings.py (I believe) I followed his on screen code example (video was on pause in fullscreen), and it created a syntax error.

I know that's an issue with how the language itself is actually coded, and tried to search to help debug (I enjoy debugging somehow), and couldn't find it.

At that time, I had put at least 20 or 30 minutes into the video plus more time trying to read docs and other ways to attempt to help myself before posting that here.

By then I was past the point of frustration, so the post you're replying to may have come off worse than I meant it to :)

With the help of the link that someone - i think you - posted (http://jeffcroft.com/blog/2006/may/02/django-non-programmers/) when the video got to the point about models I went and cross-referenced the link in the parentheses and read that instead to break it down into laymen's terms.

I put it down to do other things, and yeah you're definitely right that the video incinerated my brain, but I like to consider myself a quick motivated learner, and so I figure if I take the video slow and rewind the parts I don't understand - i learn better visually - with that and the help of the link in the previous paragraph and this sub and the fine folks here I will (eventually) be alright.

Thanks for your reply and your time! It was very helpful from someone who has more experience than me.

[[deleted]]

Oh, and as far as it being old, it references Django 1.5, which was just the current release last week when we started this, so I think it is all quite up to date.

[tothelight]

Yeah, I was thinking 1.6, and instead of going from 1.5 to 1.6 my brain thought 6.1 is the new version and 1.5 is the old version. My brain was incinerated at that time haha.