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Ask HN: Learning Django post-"Learn Python the Hard Way by Zed Shaw"

4 points by njstartups ↗ HN
I've pretty much completed Zed Shaw's course, "Learning Python the Hard Way." Although at the beginning I was skeptical, I've really begun to grasp the semantics of the language and I feel his way to teaching really works for me.

Now that I have the basics down, I would like to really learn Django. Are there any Django apps with source code available that I can learn from by replicating the code?

I know I can stroll over to GitHub but as a novice, I'm concerned about the code being clean and I'm pretty sure I haven't developed an eye yet for what's clean and what's not.

Any recommendations?

7 comments

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samrat
Go through the Django tutorial which you'll find in the django website, they're really helpful. Then go to showmedo.com's tutorials(they're a bit outdated but I think they really nail the concepts).

If you're not in a hurry though, and are new to web development, I'd really suggest learning Flask. It's a great introduction to web development in Python.

sixtofour
The Django tutorial is pretty good. You build up a very basic polling application as you follow the tutorial and learn the basic chunks of Django.

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.3/intro/tutorial01/

Any good intro book is going to have something similar. "Python Web Development with Django" includes a number of example projects. You can either follow along in the book and type in the examples (the "Hard" way) or download the projects and see/run them at once in their finished form (the "Common" way).

http://withdjango.com/

http://withdjango.com/readers/source/

martey
When I started learning Django, the first thing I did was work through the tutorial in the official documentation.

I cannot stress enough how useful the official documentation is. Not only is it chock full of useful code examples, but the fact that it is a living document means that it is always up-to-date (unlike Django books or blog posts).

I can not really think of any useful Django applications on Github or Bitbucket that are simple enough for someone who is learning the framework to replicate, but if pushed I would suggest:

- the source code for the framework itself

- applications made by core developers (like django-registration or django-taggit)

- applications with a significant following in the community (like south or django-sentry)

njstartups
Yes, that's going to be my primary source for learning Django. Thanks!
adrianscott
There's a few starter apps w/ source code at http://www.coderbuddy.com/ and you can start editing and testing them using the site.

(You can also upload and expand zip files of other projs/code you may find, as well as copy public projects into new projects of your own.)

Hope this helps...

jwong42
I was a novice in programming and wanted to try web development so I chose python and Django as my starting point. I started learning Django by first doing the poll app tutorial found on the official Django documentation page. https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.3/intro/tutorial01/

Then I read the online Django Book and followed along the examples found in those chapters. http://www.djangobook.com/en/2.0/

After that, I felt I had a good grasp of Django but wanted to get a more complete experience of building a simple but powerful web app so I purchased this book - http://www.amazon.com/Django-Website-Development-Ayman-Houri.... I really learned a lot from this book since not only did it provide me with a better understanding of the Django framework, it also helped me learn how to build all the nice features like tagging, search and integrate other technologies such as JQuery.

Now, I am trying to develop my own app using the book as a guide and I am having a lot of fun with it!