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My First Week Learning Python & Django β€” Notes From a Non-CS Beginner

Hey everyone πŸ‘‹
I’m Harsh, a non-CS beginner learning Python, Django, and DevOps from scratch.
This is my first dev post β€” documenting my progress, mistakes, fixes, and what finally started making sense.
I’m sharing this to keep myself accountable and to connect with other beginners who are figuring things out at a time.

🟒 Small Wins This Week

  • Got my first virtual environment working(.venv)
  • Installed Django successfully
  • Created my first project
  • Created my first app
  • Understood the Django project structure β€” what settings.py,urls.py, and manage.py actually do
  • Connected URLs β†’ views.py β†’ HttpResponse
  • Learned how HTTP requests & responses actually work
  • Explored HTTP status codes (100–599)
  • Created my first custom error page in Django
  • Got verified on X and decided to share my dev journey publicly
  • Small progress >>> no progress.

πŸ”΅ Concepts That Finally Made Sense

1. How project-level urls.py and app-level urls.py work together

  • project/urls.py is the master router
  • Each app can have its own urls.py for modular routing
  • The project routes traffic to the app using include()

So basically:

project urls.py β†’ sends specific URL paths β†’ app urls.py β†’ sends to view

2. Using regex / patterns in URLs (my favorite part of the week)

I learned how URL patterns can capture:

  • path parameters like /blog/12/
  • query parameters like ?search=django
  • regex patterns to validate or structure routes

Things like:

re_path(r'^article/(?P<id>[0-9]+)/$', views.article)

This was the moment I realised how flexible Django routing truly is.

Django gives you structure and rules β€” and honestly, that feels good as a beginner.

🎯 My Goals for Week 2

  • Build my first Django app from scratch
  • Learn Git & GitHub properly
  • Try a simple DevOps workflow (maybe Docker or CI/CD basics)
  • Post daily progress on X + weekly logs here on DEV
  • Stay consistent, not perfect

πŸ’¬ Closing Thoughts

If you're also learning β€” especially as a non-CS beginner β€” I’d love to connect.
Let’s build, break things, fix them, and grow together.
You can find me on X for daily updates.
X (Twitter) Follow

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