5 ms·

Any recommended resources on getting started with Django, or are the official docs sufficient?

• kat 15y ago
  Official docs are great, also check out the django book http://www.djangobook.com/ http://www.djangobook.com/
  • ulucaydin 15y ago
    Sadly the django book is very old and not updated since a long time.
• run4yourlives 15y ago
  The official website is more than enough, so long as you have python experience. If not, you should start with Dive Into Python (or something similar) at the same time at least. If you have any MVC framework experience at all django is relatively straightforward.
• bryanh 15y ago
  Official docs are some of the best of any project (save maybe the best practices for view creation...). I'd recommend skimming through a few Django applications to get an idea of structure, one I know off the top of my head (as I wrote it): https://github.com/zapier/django-knowledge https://github.com/zapier/django-knowledge Read the excellent Yipit Django blog (http://tech.yipit.com/ http://tech.yipit.com/). Especially their post about learning Django: http://tech.yipit.com/2012/02/28/183772464/ http://tech.yipit.com/2012/02/28/183772464/
• jonknee 15y ago
  The official docs are outstanding, some of the best documentation of any open source project I have used.
• spdy 15y ago
  The official docs are more than sufficient. They were one of the main reasons i picked up Django. Or you can watch the following: Introduction to Django http://pyvideo.org/video/604/introduction-to-django http://pyvideo.org/video/604/introduction-to-django and if you want to venture further down the rabbit hole Django in Depth http://pyvideo.org/video/610/django-in-depth http://pyvideo.org/video/610/django-in-depth
  • ashconnor 15y ago
    The slides for "Introduction to Django" really need to be published. That video is impossible to follow without them.
• zalew 15y ago
  docs + https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.4/intro/tutorial01/ https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.4/intro/tutorial01/
• maaku 15y ago
  You'd be hard-pressed to find a better resource than the official docs.
• kmfrk 15y ago
  Django Book is ancient and obsolete as hell, but if you can fix most of the breakages, it is one of the best resources there are. I don't agree that the documentation is great, but it is definitely good, although it is frustratingly lacking in some areas - although you won't run into that soon. My suggestion is to try it in this order: 1. Django Book 2. Django Project Intro[1] 3. Django by Example[2] The best tip to learning Django is to use #django on freenode[3]. People there will not do your work for you, but interactive live help is simply the best there is, unless you know forums like Something Awful where you can write out long-form questions to people who'll respond in the same fashion. EDIT: I seriously wouldn't bother with any of the Django (book) books out there. [1]: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/intro/ https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/intro/ [2]: http://lightbird.net/dbe/index.html http://lightbird.net/dbe/index.html [3]: http://webchat.freenode.net/ http://webchat.freenode.net/
• bmelton 15y ago
  How's your Python? I hated Django when I was learning it and Python at the same time, but having abandoned Django (and sticking with plain old Python), when I revisited it a few years ago, things were dramatically easier. In short, if your Python skills are passable, I'd say the docs at djangoproject.com[1] are more than sufficient. If not, I'd guess you might have troubles. [1] - https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.4/ https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.4/
  • dominicrodger 15y ago
    FWIW - I learned Python by learning Django, and loved it. Probably a meaningless datapoint, but I thought I'd offer it anyway.
    • bmelton 15y ago
      I got my initial exposure that way, but I had a hard time putting all the pieces together until I pulled Django out, and got a better understanding of which things came from where. I should probably also point out that I'd only dealt with web languages before that point (PHP, ASP Classic, etc), so that's probably a negative point for me. Everybody's different, for sure. For me, my Django suffered until I understood Python. Can I ask what your pre-Django experience was? I wonder if there's any significance.
      • dominicrodger 15y ago
        Maybe previous experience is significant - I learned to program building websites (HTML -> early CMSes -> PHP), then did a computer science degree (mostly Java, though I did a bit of Ruby on Rails), then got a job in C++ (where I still work, 3 years later), which I'd been doing for a year or so by the time I picked up Django. To be honest, I suspect my Python's not great - I probably ought to spend more time just writing Python - I'd hazard a guess that less than 20% of the time I spend building websites with Django is spent writing Python (most is probably spent fiddling around with HTML/JS). I can always get by - but every once in a while I learn something new that I wish I'd known about long before (I remember learning about list comprehensions at an intro to Python talk at Stack Overflow DevDays after I'd been using Python for about a year!).
• danneu 15y ago
  Since Railscasts.com is now making money through subscriptions, I'm surprised nobody's made a Djangocasts.com. Back when I was only flirting with web frameworks, Railscasts' bite-sized videos were the easiest way to get a taste of Rails.