One Month Python, Focused on Django



DontShaveMePls said:
Serious question, why do ballers like you care about programming? Surely, your time must be worth more money wise if you focus on marketing no?
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If you run a software company it is important that the person at the top understands programming even if that person doesn't spend their time programming.

How are you going to properly hire programmers if you can't tell whether someone is a good programmer or not? Similarly how are you going to know whether someone is working on a really hard problem or is working on a really easy problem and is goofing off? How would you be able to properly manage a team of 5+ programmers (a necessity for anything besides a very small software company) if you don't know the first thing about programming yourself?

If you're just a "marketing guy" and you run a software company, the next thing you know you will have a team of 3 programmers underneath you who are writing garbage code that will be impossible to update (good luck when you need to add a new feature) and ended up taking 10x longer than you thought (two months suddenly became two years) because you didn't realize the 3 programmers don't know what they are doing and/or are lazy, or that what you thought was an easy problem actually turned out to be really difficult. And of course you don't know any of this because you can't tell the difference between good and bad yourself.

In general it is really important for the CEO to be intimately familiar with what makes that company competitive. If it is a company that markets other peoples products, the person at the top better be a great marketer. If the company at the top does fulfillment, the person at the top better know that industry inside and out. And if the company develops software, the person at the top better have a strong programming background.
 
I'd really question any site that would claim they could teach you what you need to know in only a month. Quite a stretch.

I'm not saying don't take the class, I'd just say keep you expectations tempered.
 
Rage9 said:
I'd really question any site that would claim they could teach you what you need to know in only a month. Quite a stretch.

I'm not saying don't take the class, I'd just say keep you expectations tempered.
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I think they mean 1 course per month. The site has a lot of different courses.
 
What happened to just building a website when you want it? That's how I learned to code. Why does everyone need classes nowadays? If you need somebody to teach you, you're doing it wrong and you'll never be good anyway. Just pick a simple project that would benefit you in some way, and figure out how to build it as you go.
 
DontShaveMePls said:
Serious question, why do ballers like you care about programming? Surely, your time must be worth more money wise if you focus on marketing no?
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I'm sure if I focused more on marketing than my children, my time would be worth more too. Same with vacations, my wife, etc.

Everyone has this idea they need to be "doing" more of 1-2 core things to maximize their "worth more money" angle. I am very different though and I follow only what I decide for myself and choose for myself.

Also, pushing yourself in areas you may be weak in provide more benefit to you overall then sharpening an already sharpened skill.

So far, I haven't been let down by my choices.


Rage9 said:
I'd really question any site that would claim they could teach you what you need to know in only a month. Quite a stretch.

I'm not saying don't take the class, I'd just say keep you expectations tempered.
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I didn't understand it as it would teach me everything I need to know in 1 month. I understood it as teaching me what I need to know at a very base level for Python ( considering I have a small Perl/huge PHP background ).
 
chatmasta said:
What happened to just building a website when you want it? That's how I learned to code. Why does everyone need classes nowadays? If you need somebody to teach you, you're doing it wrong and you'll never be good anyway. Just pick a simple project that would benefit you in some way, and figure out how to build it as you go.
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Thats pretty much what I did with PHP and how most PHP also do.


However, I ( and I assume other people ) would actually like to learn a little bit about how real code is put together.
 
eliquid said:
considering I have a small Perl/huge PHP background
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Then why the need for a course? If you know one language, you pretty much know them all.

I was able to pick up Python, and put together a decent app without any problem at all, and I'm nobody special. Any decent developer can switch languages like that.
 
eliquid said:
Thats pretty much what I did with PHP and how most PHP also do.


However, I ( and I assume other people ) would actually like to learn a little bit about how real code is put together.
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Everything you need to learn is in the documentation. Python and Django both have very good documentation.

Any guide beyond the documentation will become increasingly out-of-date and will always be a derivative work. Go to the source. Read the docs.

I understand docs can be dense. But there are thousands of free tutorials online that are more digestible. They are always available, frequently written by experts. You can also look at them before you use them. They do not cost money.
 
Kiopa_Matt said:
Then why the need for a course? If you know one language, you pretty much know them all.

I was able to pick up Python, and put together a decent app without any problem at all, and I'm nobody special. Any decent developer can switch languages like that.
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No offense, but that's like saying why build another CMS system like Envrin? Why the need for another CMS? If you know one CMS you know them all and can use them all.

I didn't mean anything bad by the above, just showing you an example of thought process used.

I don't think an uneducated PHP coder who learned most things off the internet can compare to someone that went through formal education learning comp sci. I am proof of that. Having a class is one step to things I still can't grasp like OO and classes.

Sure I could code circles around you in linear fashion without once writing a function. Maybe personally, Id like to actually learn more about it though.
 
I knew several other languages before using Python. I stumbled onto the right book for me by accident:

Think Python: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist

It's actually targeted at a lower skill level than what I had at the time, but the style of how it teaches was perfect for me.

Everybody learns differently, I get that books may not be the right path for everyone, but it fit my style well. I was able to crank out a non-trivial OO module for talking to an external device, with very little issue, shortly after reading the book.
 
chatmasta said:
What happened to just building a website when you want it? That's how I learned to code. Why does everyone need classes nowadays? If you need somebody to teach you, you're doing it wrong and you'll never be good anyway. Just pick a simple project that would benefit you in some way, and figure out how to build it as you go.
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I used to do that then as the site grew I ended up having to rewrite everything from scratch. It was a huge pain in the ass. Learning how to develop a project that can be expanded later is a big deal. Atleast to a code hack like myself anwyay.

Thanks for the share OP.
 
I think the problem with Python is the lack of midlevel tutorials and this is where PHP and other languages beat Python.

It's very easy to get going with Python or Django, but 95% of the tutorials are for this early stage and then you jump straight to comp-sci stuff full of abbreviations and 'nerd autist writing'.

The middle ground is not there and that is frustrating and you might complain about noobs and spaghetti coders with PHP but at least there is a very active community at all levels. Python coders seem quite arrogant at the higher levels, probably due to before mentioned authism.

I think because Python isn't sexy, there is less support. I'd probably start over with Rails or Node as a noob now (still a noob but you get the point).
 
rusvik said:
Python coders seem quite arrogant at the higher levels, probably due to before mentioned authism.
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The same is true for Ruby/Rails. I don't think they're arrogant - they are just very passionate about their work/language/tools and it often comes across as arrogant.

I think because Python isn't sexy, there is less support. I'd probably start over with Rails or Node as a noob now (still a noob but you get the point).
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Python has by far the cleanest syntax - I really like it. Though I do find myself coding PHP/Ruby most of the time so...

As a noob I say start with PHP and then pick up Rails (and Ruby ofc) if you're looking for well paid freelance work. And JS.
 
rusvik said:
I think the problem with Python is the lack of midlevel tutorials and this is where PHP and other languages beat Python.

It's very easy to get going with Python or Django, but 95% of the tutorials are for this early stage and then you jump straight to comp-sci stuff full of abbreviations and 'nerd autist writing'.
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I've noticed the same. If / when I have a problem with either, PHP or LINUX server administration, I Google it, and get a good half dozen Stackoverflow results, one of which is almost always spot on to what I need.

With Python, I end up sifting through Github repositories, scouring other people's code, hoping I can piece it together to come up with a solution to my problem.
 
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