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I really liked the Udacity course. It's by no means exhaustive or representative of the ecosystem (it focuses on Python/Google App Engine, I took it quite a whi

by Kurtz79 13y ago

I really liked the Udacity course. It's by no means exhaustive or representative of the ecosystem (it focuses on Python/Google App Engine, I took it quite a while ago but I assume it has not changed), but introduces a lot of basic concepts (client/server, templating, routing, caching, security, cookies...) in a very concise and efficient way.

muraiki 13y ago
I second this recommendation. The Web Dev course on Udacity formed the start of what eventually became a full-time job programming for me. The course has just the right mix of breadth and depth for a beginner that moving on to any larger MVC framework will be easy.
thinkpad20 13y ago
I enjoyed that course a lot; I took it in its first run soon after I started teaching myself programming. My only complaint with the course was that, for me anyway, it left a lot of mystery in terms of answering how it's all actually working. There were a lot of pieces, such as Django boilerplate code and using Google App Engine, where they showed you how to use them in a specific manner, but never really explained how they were working behind the scenes. So I felt like there was a lot of magic, and that my understanding didn't run particularly deep in some key areas. That said, the course covered a huge amount of ground and I'm sure they had to be judicious with what got covered. And I greatly enjoyed it. But I would have liked if they went with a bit more of a ground-up approach, explaining how a server worked and how data gets passed into the app, and then how that translated into Django's operation, etc...
- spez 13y ago
  Steve, the Udacity instructor, here. I actually deliberately didn't use Django specifically because it's so complicated for beginners (and for pros, IMHO). I was trying to avoid magic. Webapp2, which is the web framework GAE users, and what we used in the course, is about as simple as you can get without starting from scratch.
  - rattray 13y ago
    Hey Steve, thanks for your work in this course. It's a terrific thing for you to do and it's my favorite course to recommend to beginners to webdev. That said, the webapp2 decision is by far my biggest hesitation in recommending it. Webapp2 just doesn't have the community support; whether django is too "heavy" or flask too "light", they're both popular, which means they have great support, plugins, help on SO, and a lot of developers familiar with them. Webapp2 also hasn't seen a release since 2012[0]. I write this having recently completed a small consulting project where I helped a team on GAE move from Webapp2 to django. The productivity gains just from using django plugins and builtins was insane. They had been on webapp2 because their dev learned webdev on your course, and I think he would have been much happier had the course included a more widely used framework. Lock-in on Appengine is also a major issue; the work to move off can be enormous, especially if you're using a framework designed for GAE. Again, I totally understand the decision to use webapp2 and the course is still a huge net positive. But if you ever think about revising it, I'd recommend considering another framework, and possibly even using Elastic Beanstalk. EDIT: I understand django can take a little more to get up and running, but most people learning Python are going to have to learn it very soon anyway. I learned how to program by doing the django tutorial, and didn't find it burdensome at all. [0] https://pypi.python.org/pypi/webapp2 https://pypi.python.org/pypi/webapp2
    - spez 13y ago
      Sure, in the right hands Django (and Rails) and yield major productivity boosts. I personally don't like working in frameworks of that size because I find myself fighting them to do what I want. For the course itself, I really wanted the students to get as close to the server as possible. Then, when some of them switch to the heavier frameworks, they'll have a better idea of what the framework is doing and what is possible. The course had a time constraint on it as well. All in all, your anecdote reenforces my feelings on the topic :)
      - rattray 13y ago
        Fair! Thanks for your response.
- crazcarl 13y ago
  I took the course more recently (August - Oct 2013) and the forums had most of my questions already answered in the areas where more depth was needed for me to understand a concept.

by Kurtz79 13y ago

muraiki 13y ago

I second this recommendation. The Web Dev course on Udacity formed the start of what eventually became a full-time job programming for me. The course has just the right mix of breadth and depth for a beginner that moving on to any larger MVC framework will be easy.

thinkpad20 13y ago

I enjoyed that course a lot; I took it in its first run soon after I started teaching myself programming. My only complaint with the course was that, for me anyway, it left a lot of mystery in terms of answering how it's all actually working. There were a lot of pieces, such as Django boilerplate code and using Google App Engine, where they showed you how to use them in a specific manner, but never really explained how they were working behind the scenes. So I felt like there was a lot of magic, and that my understanding didn't run particularly deep in some key areas. That said, the course covered a huge amount of ground and I'm sure they had to be judicious with what got covered. And I greatly enjoyed it. But I would have liked if they went with a bit more of a ground-up approach, explaining how a server worked and how data gets passed into the app, and then how that translated into Django's operation, etc...

spez 13y ago
Steve, the Udacity instructor, here. I actually deliberately didn't use Django specifically because it's so complicated for beginners (and for pros, IMHO). I was trying to avoid magic. Webapp2, which is the web framework GAE users, and what we used in the course, is about as simple as you can get without starting from scratch.
- rattray 13y ago
  Hey Steve, thanks for your work in this course. It's a terrific thing for you to do and it's my favorite course to recommend to beginners to webdev. That said, the webapp2 decision is by far my biggest hesitation in recommending it. Webapp2 just doesn't have the community support; whether django is too "heavy" or flask too "light", they're both popular, which means they have great support, plugins, help on SO, and a lot of developers familiar with them. Webapp2 also hasn't seen a release since 2012[0]. I write this having recently completed a small consulting project where I helped a team on GAE move from Webapp2 to django. The productivity gains just from using django plugins and builtins was insane. They had been on webapp2 because their dev learned webdev on your course, and I think he would have been much happier had the course included a more widely used framework. Lock-in on Appengine is also a major issue; the work to move off can be enormous, especially if you're using a framework designed for GAE. Again, I totally understand the decision to use webapp2 and the course is still a huge net positive. But if you ever think about revising it, I'd recommend considering another framework, and possibly even using Elastic Beanstalk. EDIT: I understand django can take a little more to get up and running, but most people learning Python are going to have to learn it very soon anyway. I learned how to program by doing the django tutorial, and didn't find it burdensome at all. [0] https://pypi.python.org/pypi/webapp2 https://pypi.python.org/pypi/webapp2
  - spez 13y ago
    Sure, in the right hands Django (and Rails) and yield major productivity boosts. I personally don't like working in frameworks of that size because I find myself fighting them to do what I want. For the course itself, I really wanted the students to get as close to the server as possible. Then, when some of them switch to the heavier frameworks, they'll have a better idea of what the framework is doing and what is possible. The course had a time constraint on it as well. All in all, your anecdote reenforces my feelings on the topic :)
    - rattray 13y ago
      Fair! Thanks for your response.
crazcarl 13y ago
I took the course more recently (August - Oct 2013) and the forums had most of my questions already answered in the areas where more depth was needed for me to understand a concept.