

From "Zero to Civic" in 5 Minutes - mheadd210
http://codeforamerica.org/2012/07/10/from-zero-to-civic-in-5-minutes/

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patio11
I'm not really a rah-rah API guy from the perspective of governance, but they
genuinely solve business problems, often in areas not directly anticipated by
the API.

For example, suppose you're making a local website for Ogaki restaurants.
Getting the addresses and phone numbers of all of them (a couple thousand)
would be sort of difficult. Happily, their owners will be thrown in jail if
they don't leave that information with the Ogaki food inspector, so if they
have an API for food inspection results you can query it, toss the irrelevant
data ("In compliance: No rat tails in soup", etc), and get your site
bootstrapped in an afternoon.

~~~
chii
but you haven't considered the cost of making such information available. Are
you willing to pay some extra tax dollars to make such information available
(even if you most likely won't be making use of it)?

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mmanfrin
This is pretty great -- question to HN: as a person learning how to program
who has a somewhat tenuous grasp on python (i.e., I have done Project Euler up
to 15, but I am daunted by full scale apps), how do I make the transition from
learning the syntax to learning the methods of something like this? I feel
tutorials can only go so far, but those are the only things I can think of to
use to learn.

~~~
_pius
One approach would be to find a popular Python web framework and then follow
the tutorials for that. Because you already have some familiarity with the
language, the syntax won't distract you from absorbing the application
architecture concepts.

~~~
mmanfrin
I did that with Django -- I feel on the cusp of getting it, but the tutorial
ends kind of abruptly. I'm working on a project to get my feet we, though (a
simple tiered to-do that I am planning on integrating with a little under-
construction site to show true %-done of aspects of a site).

