Comments on: Django First Impressions: The Tutorial

By: Heikki Toivonen

Heikki Toivonen — Fri, 15 May 2009 07:03:13 +0000

@Markus: I guess I’ll take a look at that eventually. Now it is Django’s turn

@Andy: Excellent! I’ll certainly try that.

@masklinn: I am not sure if I’ll join the mailinglist yet, as I am already on quite a few. But I’ll certainly take a look at the tickets and file whatever seems like a clear issue that hasn’t been reported. Sorry about the JavaScript, but so far WP Hashcash has been really effective at combating comment spam and is no hindrance to most users. If there is a browser that makes it problematic to deal with it, please let me know. I am also open to suggestions regarding other antispam solutions.

@Dougal: Thanks for the tips. As for dev server not detecting added files to restart, that is what the tutorial said. I didn’t actually test it, but I’ll try that out and report an issue if there is a discrepancy.

By: Dougal Matthews

Dougal Matthews — Thu, 14 May 2009 12:23:27 +0000

Just to add a little to your points, I’ve been using Django for a year now.

1. Before September last year the best version was in SVN. This was due to a huge number of changes that were happening.

So you may find loads of data articles that relate to SVN version being the best. However, unless in dev I think the best approach now is to use the official releases. 1.0.2 at the moment, 1.1 soon.

2. The settings file isn’t the best, my problem isn’t that its python but more it gets a bit big and unwieldy. I don’t have an issue with it being in python, after all that means its nice simple, clear and allows for great flexibility.

3. Abolsute paths are simple assuming you set up your config properly. if you google around you will find out there is an easy way to deal with this. i think it should be used and included by default though. but yeah ive got projects running on my XP desktop, centos staging and centos production without any code changes.

4. django-debug-toolbar might be what your looking for in terms of debugging.

5. development server does restart for me when i add or change files… not sure whats going on with you there.

6. The terms app and project are a bit confusing… I think in future release we will find this may change, perhaps with removing the project and only having apps.

7. I also agree the django home page could do with a bit more in the way of video’s and such. Making it more interactive and flashy for newcomers.

Just a few points of interest there

By: ldng

ldng — Thu, 14 May 2009 12:00:28 +0000

If you want to replace the django template engine,
have a look at http://jinja.pocoo.org/

By: masklinn

masklinn — Thu, 14 May 2009 09:47:56 +0000

Please don’t hesitate:

* Pushing your feedback to the Django mailing list

* Opening documentation bugs (and maybe later providing patches) for the most problematic things (those parts of the tutorial that can be considered broken, not just design decisions you don’t like), documentation bugs and patches are considered first-class contribution by the Django community. The part about “app” not being explained well enough or the lack of a manage.py for admin customization for instance, could probably be tickets (if there aren’t tickets for that already, that is). Likewise for the site defaulting to SVN instead of “last stable release”.

edit: that javascript be required to comment on your blog is fucking annoying, by the way.

By: Andy Baker

Andy Baker — Thu, 14 May 2009 09:36:53 +0000

If you install django-extensions (http://github.com/django-extensions/django-extensions/tree/master) and Werkzeug then you get nice interactive tracebacks from by running: manage.py runserver_plus

By: Markus Gritsch

Markus Gritsch — Thu, 14 May 2009 09:09:53 +0000

Hi,

I recommend you also take a look at web2py.com, since it lacks lots of the negative points you mentioned here.

Markus