x | thought

Where to start?

Django is a webframework for python. Obviously, some knowledge of python is an advantage, but python is easy enough to understand if you already know another programming language. For developers in other languanges I recommend reading Mark Pilgrms excellent dive into python, it's freely available as pdf. Basic *nix command line skills are a must, but you can pick them up as we go along as well. HTML, some javascript, and basic http knowledge is also a must.

The first stop for anybody wanting to learn django, is the official 4 part django tutorial. I will assume you already have python installed and I will begin this tutorial from where the official one ends. Have your editor of choice ready (I use vim and pycharm), and let's dive in!

Tutorial structure: Our next steps...

We will start by creating a sane project layout for larger projects, and setup a basic development environment. We will be using git as our version control tool and the project will be hosted on github. In part 2 we will get our hands a little bit dirty with django and define our first models for the project. In part three we will checkout 3rd party apps that will want to add to our project. In part 4 we will introduce vagrant and puppet as development tools.

Where to find help

Django has excellent documentation and a vibrant community that is very supportive. Your best tools in learning django will be the django documentation, stackoverflow, and of course the web is full of tutorials, screencasts and blogs that you can find with google. If you get stuck with a problem, just hop on the django IRC channel where you normally find a lot of helpful ears (btw: I am kyrix on #django). Please do try to take your time to read the docs before asking!

Knowing your tools

So, in a nutshell: Programming is a craftsmanship, and spending time to learn to use your tools well will pay off:

• editor: no matter what editor/IDE you use, spending a day to learn how to use it well will boost your productivity.
• vcs: I will be using git. It's better to know how to use more than one. take a look at git in five minutes and the git resources mentioned on this stack question
• finding help: docs, stackoverflow, google, mailinglists, irc.
• python: I'll be addressing python resources later.

Enough babling, lets get started with part 1: setting up the project layout.