http://effectivedjango.com/ <== Very helpful!
Just keep at it. For whatever it is worth, I am largely self taught. When I started, documentation and "use the source, luke" was most of the help available. It took me years to start diving into that good stuff. I can tell you the reason I went with Django over RoR or a PHP framework was the quality of the documentation and the readability of the Python code. The place to start, I think, in reading the Mezzanine code is in the base urls.py <https://github.com/stephenmcd/mezzanine/blob/master/mezzanine/urls.py>. Work your way down the file and understand each line. Follow the patterns into the apps that make up Mezzanine – e.g. core, generic, blog, and pages – and read their respective urls.py. If it helps, think of Mezzanine as a Django app that has already been built to eliminate the tedium of building yet another hierarchical page, gallery, and blogging engine. The deeper your understanding of and comfort with Django, the better the whole thing will click. An instructive analogy, for me, is to reading and writing prose. The more prose you read, the better you get at reading it. Once you have read enough prose, the quality of your own prose will begin to improve (hopefully) and before long reading and writing prose becomes second nature. Code – whether Python, Ruby, Java – needs to be practiced, and reading code is the first step. Ultimately, just keep at it. If it interests you and you put in enough time, things will click. Some people get that click quickly. It took me a long time – almost 14 years – to transition from beginner reader of code convinced I had no aptitude for it to the first steps down with writing code on my own. The best part is that once the dots start to connect, the world really opens up. Also, the learning NEVER ends! best, ken On Fri, Dec 26, 2014 at 8:09 PM, J. Paskaruk <[email protected]> wrote: > Thanks for the encouragement. I'm pretty good at expressing myself with > words (no braggin', as Will Sonnett used to say at 3am, just facts), but > sometimes that expressive ability makes me come off like an arsehole. Most > cause I'm kind of an arsehole. But my intentions are very good, for > whatever that's worth. I read the fab docs yesterday. Anyways, I see the > value of all these things. Just continuing to hold my face squarely in > front of this here firehose. > > The way I'm looking at the best practices thing is that there are best > practices for working professionals, and there are best practices for > students. I know that there are many more days ahead of me, reading docs, > but at this point I'm flailing just to find the right docs to read (if you > have any "everyone should read this" links or books, or hell, if someone's > laid out a curriculum that you think I should follow, I'm all ears...). > This whole experience has been very instructive, needless to say, and > that's all I'm after for the moment - grand failures that reveal inner > workings. In order to fail in a properly grand fashion, I need to have the > ability to throw a wrench into the gears of the factory, which fortunately > for us, is perfectly fine to do in circumstances where the entire factory > can be restored by a keystroke. But the entire system is, of course, > designed to stop people from doing such foolish things in daily life. Every > tutorial contains at least a nod, and usually a speech that borders on > sanctimony, about best security practices. Not that this is not valuable > knowledge, of course, but security is not your priority if you're trying to > learn how to code a given functionality. > > Anyways, my site is currently laid out with "pure" css, right now I'm > occupying myself by trying to recreate the same layout leaving bootstrap > intact. Being that I've done a couple of respectable responsive designs on > my own, I'm not a big fan of Bootstrap's complexity, but then, I want a > job. Also, I'm told it's very good at automating form validation, which I'm > all for avoiding if I can...:> > > Anyways, again, I appreciate your help AND doubly appreciate your > encouragement. Schools and teachers have never worked for me, so learning > things is always a struggle, and finding people with the right sort of > patience is a struggle of its own. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Mezzanine Users" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Mezzanine Users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
