6 ms·

Not to be so unreasonably negative here, but I've been pretty suspicious of the peculiar amount of attention this book has gotten. I wish more effort was put i

• Einherji 14y ago
  I bought the "beta" edition of the book and really enjoyed it so far. I think it covers different topics than the free django book and I absolutely think they are both valuable resources. On a related note, I always seem to get more out of books that I payed for, similar to how expensive wine always tastes better. Anyone else experience this?
  • lgp171188 14y ago
    Sorry for being a jerk, but did you pay for Django?
    • pydanny 14y ago
      Like many people, I 'paid' for Django via contributions of my time.
      • Einherji 14y ago
        I agree 100%. Django may be free to use but lots of people contribute their time to to project. When I have enough experience working with it I plan to give back to the community as much as I can, that is how I will pay for django.
    • e12e 14y ago
      No, but a lot of companies did by paying people to work on Django projects, and allowing contributions back into the Free project? I've not heard of any companies (except some colleges) funding actual books in a similar way -- probably because if you pay someone to improve Django, your product (based on Django) improves, and you presumably make money from your product. Paying someone to write general documentation helps train both your and other's developers -- but the link to profit is more indirect -- writing proper text books is not something that makes sense to in-source for most institutions (shorter tutorials, technical documentation etc, being something different).
  • pekk 14y ago
    You may get more out of things you paid for because you do not want that money to have been wasted, similar to how the same wine is rated better if it is more expensive (in blind tests).
• pistoriusp 14y ago
  Not really sure why you think they both can't coexist, and why you placed so much emphasis on free?
  • clicks 14y ago
    > Not really sure why you think they both can't coexist Sure, they could and they should, however I think TSoD might have dampened the community's efforts of improving and updating the free and more official 'Django Book' when it really needed the work.
    • elithrar 14y ago
      > Sure, they could and they should, however I think TSoD might have dampened the community's efforts of improving and updating the free and more official 'Django Book' when it really needed the work. TSoD was the effort of two individuals: they can spend their time how they like. I also can't blame them for wanting to make some money back on their time, given that writing a technical book is a non-trivial exercise. It also takes a completely different set of skills to write a "beginner's book", which is really what the Django Book is.
    • pydanny 14y ago
      Just so you know, we offer the book for free to developers in need. Please go to http://django.2scoops.org/ http://django.2scoops.org/ and scroll to the bottom. Also, in my own case, just because I co-wrote TSoD doesn't mean I'm going to stop contributing to Django or it's documentation. In fact, writing it helped illuminate areas in the Django documentation that I believe I can improve. I hope readers of the book take the same approach. We all benefit from creating new and improved resources.
• elithrar 14y ago
  > Not to be so unreasonably negative here, but I've been pretty suspicious of the peculiar amount of attention this book has gotten. What makes you suspicious? I like TSoD because it fills that gap between the official docs and SO/mailing lists: it's a collection of "best practice" advice for those who have already had exposure to Django. It's a completely different approach from the Django Book, and I don't think this is a problem. They are targeting different demographics.
  • ericd 14y ago
    Thanks for mentioning that! I'm just getting into Django, and a friend recommended getting TSoD, and it's been pretty spectacularly unhelpful for actually learning how to do the basics like deployment (though I could see how it would be useful for clearing up bad habits). The Django book looks absolutely fantastic for learning the basics, better than most commercial software books I've read in the past. Wonder why they don't point to it explicitly in the Django docs tutorial. Edit: Never mind - while it's good, I've already run into a couple areas where it seems to be severely outdated, so I could see why it wouldn't be advertised too heavily.
    • pydanny 14y ago
      We've gone back and forth on how much to put in the deployment chapter. Our concern is that deployment is one of those areas that has very good documentation, is discussed frequently at meetup groups, and best practices actually change more frequently than people realize. For example, many people got on our case about not including uWSGI or even bothering to include Apache! In any case, I would love to hear your feedback on other areas.
      • ericd 14y ago
        Hey, thanks for responding. Sorry if the tone came across as harsh at all, it's quite good, it's just not the sort of book I was expecting. I was hoping it was a more comprehensive A-Z sort of book to learn the surface of everything it takes to get started, like "Agile Web Development with Rails" by Dave Thomas and DHH was for Rails, or the Django Book seems to be for early versions of Django.
• stevejalim 14y ago
  Related to the Django Book, this is a quick PSA that the source for it is now on Github and that jacobian is welcoming pull requests to help update it[1]: https://github.com/jacobian/djangobook.com/blob/master/README.rst https://github.com/jacobian/djangobook.com/blob/master/READM... [1] https://github.com/jacobian/djangobook.com/pulls https://github.com/jacobian/djangobook.com/pulls
• vickytnz 14y ago
  The whole open source eco-system has similar things e.g. Drupal books and so-so online documentation (I can attest to this one), Joomla, WP …. Books are much like doing workshops, they're a shortcut for those who are prepared to pay rather than have to do a lot of online searching.
• jacobian 14y ago
  I've got to say, this comment makes me rather sad and angry. Sad, because Two Scoops is a wonderful book. Danny and Audrey spent a ton of time soliciting feedback from a veritable Who's Who of the Django community, and they took that feedback incredibly seriously. The result is a book that does a better job encapsulating how to write successful Django code than anything anyone else has written. Angry, because of the implied slight against Audrey and Danny. It's sucks that you're too "suspicious" to consider that it might be getting so much attention because it's damned good. When you say that the book is getting "a peculiar amount of attention", it really sounds like you're suggesting some sort of scam. That assumption of bad faith is really offensive -- and completely incorrect. The book's getting attention because it's awesome. Also angry because of of the implicit demands on my free time that you're making. Writing a book is fucking hard, and I haven't had the time to keep it updated. You're not entitled to my free time. To end on a positive note, though: the book is getting updated. There's a new author working on a 3rd edition, to be released later this year. I'm not sure if the author wants to be named publicly, but it's someone I know and trust to do an great job.
  • clicks 14y ago
    It appears my observations were off. Consider my earlier comment recanted (it seems I can't modify/delete it now).
    • jacobian 14y ago
      Thanks.
    • benjamincburns 14y ago
      As a casual observer, a second Thanks. It's really really nice to see someone on the internet say the equivalent of "sorry, I was wrong."
  • rbanffy 14y ago
    > You're not entitled to my free time. I would like to volunteer some of my own free time to help. What would be the best way to contact you?
• raverbashing 14y ago
  These are two different books One is for beginners, another is for advanced users (2SoD)
• PuercoPop 14y ago
  The books are not trying to fill the same role. They are not in opposition but complement each other. 2 Scoops of Django is a book about patterns common to Django, from how to manage settings for multiply environments, to how to use CBV effectively. The book showed me that the idea of CBV is to compose orthogonal functionality rather than a crutch because Django's url dispatcher doesn't have method introspection. p.d. I dislike the initial sentence of your comment as it implies certain greed from the authors. They are committed to the idea that money shouldn't be a barrier for knowledge and they will mail you a copy of the book if you ask for it, no strings attach. They sent one to me. My email didn't try to justify or imply I couldn't afford it, I just wanted to check if they would follow up in they claim. They sent my a copy right away and asked me why I was asking for one (are you a student, etc?). As he had already sent me a copy his question was of genuine interest imho. And to me the fact that he would sent the book to anyone who ask speaks volumes of his commitment to the idea that knowledge should be free. My 2c.