Django Class Views vs Function Views

_jcyber — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 23:26:08 +0000

Hello everyone and thank you for stopping by to see what it is I have to say. This is a topic I hear a lot about regarding to Django and I would just like to put my 2 cents in.

The DRY Concept

I'm starting off with this topic because it sets the tone for what I speak on next. A lot of you well developed developers know exactly what this means, but for those who don't... DRY - "Don't Repeat Yourself". Definition of insanity plays well with this concept if you'd ask me. I bring this topic up because its self explanatory. Don't repeat yourself when you are developing code if you can avoid it.

Class Based Views

At the core, class based views are simply python classes. Django does an amazing job shipping a variety of "template" class based views that have configured functionality that you can reuse as much as you want. When creating forms in Django, especially if it is a form that's being used multiple times, there's no reason to recreate something you can make once. This approach also helps with responding to different https requests with different class instances instead of using conditionals inside a single function based view.

Class Based Views Example

Function Based Views

I won't rule out function based based views too much. Some people are more comfortable with writing their own functions instead of writing classes essentially. I will say function views are easy to implement, but that's about all I can really say about it. The main disadvantage is if you are working on a large project then you will see a lot of repetitive code within your views.

Function Based Views Example

Conclusion

Now I know I can go deeper into this conversation with explaining pro's and con's using either method of creating your Django views, but I wanted to just point out the obvious that will be brought up in a conversation. As a junior developer I've always been told to keep things simple, but don't repeat yourself. When you keep things simple and create re-usable code you open up the door to having the flexibility to increase or decrease functionality.

I hope you guys enjoyed this quick snippet and I thank you for taking the time out to see what I have to say. Let me know if you guys agree or disagree in the comments and let's talk more about it or hit me up on twitter(@jcyber101 ). Cheers!

Just keep coding

_jcyber — Sun, 28 Feb 2021 05:24:52 +0000

I'm Nervous

Hello Everyone. My name is Joshua Covington and I've been a Software Engineer for a year now. This is my first post, so thank you all for taking the time to read what I have to say. I told myself that I would start jotting down my thoughts, so here I go.

Starting The Journey

Before I got 100% serious about my journey as a developer I was consistently on and off with my production towards accomplishing my goals. There were a lot of courses I watched on YouTube. There were a lot of subscriptions to various open source learning programs like CodeAcademy for example. I also have a load of courses on Udemy that I still to this day have not completed. I just could not figure out what I wanted to do. I wanted to know it all.

With that being said, I started somewhere. Yes I was all over the place trying to learn different languages and frameworks to see what I feel most comfortable with and I think it took me getting my first break as an engineer with the company I'm with now to focus on one language until I got it down packed.

The Switch

I started off as a Network Engineer II because that was the extend of my experience while I was serving in the US Army. As a Network Engineer I wanted to automate small tasks like backing up my switch/router configs every month or run scripts to troubleshoot various things. What better language to do that with?... Of course Python.

The company I am employed by had a pathways program for their employees to step into a realm that they had interest in. I loved being a Network Engineer, but I saw where the job market was going and decided to switch to Software Engineering and luckily the program needed a young engineer with some Python experience.

Finally Finding My Happy Place

For the past year in this position I've developed in Python and its been great. There are a lot of things I still have yet to learn, but over this past year being thrown into the fire I've learned a lot.

With programming in Python I started to pick up Django. The best decision of my life to be honest. I love everything Django has to offer. I know there are fans out there of Django and others who prefer other frameworks. While working on my masters one of my courses caused me to dive even deeper with finishing solutions to very detailed projects that we have to turn in.

Moral Of The Story

With telling a small snippet of my story and where I am today, I am saying all of this to say... Just Keep Coding...

Yes, for the senior developers who may have better things to say than I do... Just hear me out. If someone was to ask me what language or framework they should learn, I would tell them to experiment. I was all over the place until an opportunity knocked me inline with the language/Framework that was comfortable for me to learn.

I was stressed out, frustrated and was fed up with trying to pursue this dream that I thought I wasn't good enough for. Just keep coding... You will find that language/framework you enjoy learning and it will come naturally. Things take time for folks like me who wasn't born with the brain of a computer science major (no disrespect).

DEV Community: _jcyber