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Why we’re writing a Django book specifically for portfolio projects and MVPs

James Timmins on June 13, 2019

TLDR: The hardest part of building web applications is rarely using the framework itself or even the “business logic”. It’s cleanly integrating you...
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Yaser Al-Najjar • Edited

I found that learning the vocabulary before diving is far more important than anything.

Cuz what makes Django unique is its rich vocabulary.

1. MVT

2. Middleware

3. QuerySet vs Row level function
4. Objects Manager
5. Migrations
6. Transactions
7. Signal

7. Views (base classes & mixins) 
8. Forms
9. Permissions

10. URLs
11. Routers

12. Serializer
13. ViewSet
14. Hyperlinks

What to use and when to use it is what matters.

Those who don't know the vocab will always use the wrong tools.

  • Plz lemme know if I missed something (unique to Django) or maybe that I need to learn 😁
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Donald

I like the idea of this. I've known about and briefly used Django since 2007, but I really ramped up use in 2017 building a bunch of MVPs (that apparently are still in use) for startups.

The majority of my challenges with it were in managing authorization (in DRF) and initially breaking away from Jinja and using a frontend framework instead. The documentation was generally easy to follow, but I did get a habit of going through the source code, because it quickly turned out documentation was terse. If I remember correctly, that was primarily when I was trying to handle auth and trying to understand the ORM. I think I also had to learn how to create Django commands from example, but that's something that surprisingly was very helpful.

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Jean-Michel Plourde

It's something I look closely for its development. I started an internship a month ago and I'm on the Python team, working on a Django app. I kind of learned on the fly many of the things you guys are projecting to explain on your book, but I totally see this as a book to read for any new comer into the team.

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James Timmins

What other areas of confusion have you all found when learning about Django APIs? I'd love to know so we can add explainers for those areas!

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Max Ong Zong Bao

I think it's more of working with front-end framework and deployment that is lacking.

The use of a task queue is important as well.