Practical Django Projects
by James Bennett · first published 2008
17mentions
6recommended by
17HN commenters
2008–2022first – last mentioned
35% recommend47% neutral18% critical
Why HN recommends it
Walks the reader through building complete Django applications, starting with a blog, giving beginners a practical feel for the framework and a first working web app to build on.
Common criticism: Code targets older Django versions (1.0 and 1.1), so later changes need checking.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
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…The Django community is very responsive and professional with questions. Posts on the newsgroup usually get answered within hours, and IRC channel within minutes. If you do go Django, may I suggest Practical Django Projects: http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Django-Projects-Second-Benne... Also, if you're looking for off shore Django developers, look up a few people on djangopeople.net.
on “Ask HN: Updated recommendation on Rails versus Django?” ↗You might find James Bennett's book "Practical Django Projects" helpful: http://www.apress.com/open-source/python/9781430219385 https://bitbucket.org/ubernostrum/practical-django-projects/... It talks about Django's apps focus and tries to get one out of the habit…
on “Django Best Practices” ↗Here's a book that got me started - http://www.amazon.in/Practical-Django-Projects/dp/1590599969 Practical Django Projects got me started with a simple webapp in around 24 hours.
on “Ask HN: I want to write a simple webapp, how should I start?” ↗"Practical Django Projects" by James Bennett was very good, but was released back for Django 1.1 and I don't know how much it's been updated since. Walks the reader through creating the prototypical Django application: a blog.…
on “Ask HN: Books like “Crafting interpreters” or “The ray tracer challenge”?” ↗If you find someone to pair with you, great. If you don't, finish the django book http://www.djangobook.com/en/2.0/ and start fiddling with Practical Django Projects http://www.apress.com/9781590599969. It's a decent book and gives you a feel of some real applications. There always is stackoverflow and mailing lists if you get stuck. You can also hop in #django…
on “HN: I want to trade my finance knowledge for python/django mentorship” ↗…Way". Other great Python related books to pick up are: Pro Python by Marty Alchin Expert Python Programming by Tarek Ziadé If you're looking to get into web development then, I'd suggest picking up: Practical Django Projects Pro Django and Django 1.1 Testing and Debugging Hope that helps!
on “Ask HN: Learning Python, Looking for book or class on software construction.” ↗…http://www.amazon.com/Sams-Teach-Yourself-Django-Hours/dp/06... Professional Python Frameworks: Web 2.0 Programming with Django and Turbogears: http://www.amazon.com/Professional-Python-Frameworks-Program... Here are two coming out later in the year: Practical Django Projects (June or July 2008): http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Django-Projects-Pratical/dp/... Python Web Development with Django (Sep 2008): http://www.amazon.com/Python-Development-Django-Developers-L...
on “Ask YC: What is your take on web2py?” ↗…seem to go deep right away and don't provide a structured way of learning). It's pretty outdated by now, so you'll likely spend more time checking the differences (i.e. class based views). Same goes for Practical Django Projects[3]. You're best off looking at some online tutorials, another Django Book[1], or thinking of something to build and approaching it from scratch. Django's docs are very good, and there's a lot of open…
on “The Django Book is getting updated ” ↗The features remind me of the CMS that is built in James Bennett's Practical Django Projects: http://www.apress.com/book/view/1590599969
on “Django CMS - The new CMS for Django” ↗…significant an issue is it how old these books are? The Django Book is from 2007 and predates even Django version 1.0, and the "in progress" second edition on the website has its last update in March 2009. Practical Django Projects is from 2008. Do these books have enough special sauce relative to up-to-date Django 1.3 documentation and tutorials to be worthwhile?
on “HN: I want to trade my finance knowledge for python/django mentorship” ↗…a working website out the door as soon as possible, and study programming at greater depth on the side (without expecting that effort to pay for itself immediately). I started going through the book "Practical Django Projects" this evening and it feels right at my level. Thanks for all your perspectives! I appreciate it a lot.
on “Is it worth starting "from scratch" in web dev? Straight Python, or Django?” ↗can anyone recommend a resource (book,tutorial,etc.) that focuses on application development in python? something similar to Practical Django Projects, but for stand alone applications instead of web apps (for now).<p>i'm in a bit of a funny place, i have a decent/good grasp of python syntax and my logic isn't bad, but i have no clue on how…
on “Ask HN: Project-based resource on python application development” ↗thanks daenney, can you recommend any project-based ebook out there that I can buy? I tried searching but everything I found seems to be outdated. I would be interestd in something along the lines of Practical Django Projects by James Bennet (apress)
on “Ask HN: What level of Python knowledge is required to move on to Django” ↗Practical Django Projects got an updated second edition in 2010 which would be a good thing, but... It's unfortunately sort of half-finished. The author clearly lost interest halfway through. The accompanying github repo was…
on “HN: I want to trade my finance knowledge for python/django mentorship” ↗I had my suspicions of Apress already after reading their Practical Django Projects (2004) book. Book itself was quite ok, but it was referring to downloadable source code of the presented projects from Apress website. To my knowledge this sourcecode of the sample projects isn't still…
on “Avoid Apress” ↗