
Two Scoops of Django final edition released - manojlds
https://django.2scoops.org?hn=1
======
clicks
Not to be so unreasonably negative here, but I've been pretty suspicious of
the peculiar amount of attention this book has gotten.

I wish more effort was put into updating the /free/ Django book (created by
Jacob Kaplan-Moss and Adrian Holovaty, the creators of Django):
<http://www.djangobook.com/en/2.0/index.html> \-- what's fantastic about the
Django book is it could be read by a complete novice with no prior experience
of webapp development, indeed it introduces the patterns to a MVC framework in
a great way with wonderful analogies. Novices are not going to have a fun time
with TSoD.

edit: As stevejalim has pointed out, jacobian is taking pull requests to
update the book for Django 1.5:
[https://github.com/jacobian/djangobook.com/blob/master/READM...](https://github.com/jacobian/djangobook.com/blob/master/README.rst)
\-- have a go!

~~~
jacobian
I've got to say, this comment makes me rather sad and angry.

Sad, because _Two Scoops_ is a wonderful book. Danny and Audrey spent a ton of
time soliciting feedback from a veritable Who's Who of the Django community,
and they took that feedback incredibly seriously. The result is a book that
does a better job encapsulating how to write successful Django code than
anything anyone else has written.

Angry, because of the implied slight against Audrey and Danny. It's sucks that
you're too "suspicious" to consider that it might be getting so much attention
because it's damned good. When you say that the book is getting "a peculiar
amount of attention", it really sounds like you're suggesting some sort of
scam. That assumption of bad faith is really offensive -- and completely
incorrect. The book's getting attention because it's awesome.

Also angry because of of the implicit demands on my free time that you're
making. Writing a book is fucking hard, and I haven't had the time to keep it
updated. You're not entitled to my free time.

To end on a positive note, though: the book is getting updated. There's a new
author working on a 3rd edition, to be released later this year. I'm not sure
if the author wants to be named publicly, but it's someone I know and trust to
do an great job.

~~~
clicks
It appears my observations were off. Consider my earlier comment recanted (it
seems I can't modify/delete it now).

~~~
benjamincburns
As a casual observer, a second Thanks. It's really really nice to see someone
on the internet say the equivalent of "sorry, I was wrong."

------
vfulco
This is just a phenomenal book. After reading the Django docs a few times, I
dove into TSoD and realized it was way over my head but the content was
excellent from a pragmatic, "get things done", "I was wondering about that"
point of view. After going back to Django docs and starting Kenneth Love's Get
Started with Django Series then returning back to TSoD, I am even more
impressed with the insights and breath of the book. Even as a noob, I consider
it a must have reference. Do you really want to go thru all the mistakes,
errors and pitfalls that the authors are warning you away from? Some things in
life are just genuinely good and of the highest quality PERIOD. Stop being so
jaded gang.

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fijter
Bought the PDF beta once it was posted here on HN with the hope you guys would
be nice and provide an EPUB version later on. Just want to say thank you for
listening and doing so! If you haven't bought this book and are in some way
(beginner or veteran) a Django developer go and buy it, there is always
something new to learn even for the most experienced.

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khalstvedt
I'm glad this has gotten the attention it deserves; I purchased the beta when
embarking on my first Django project, and it was a bit over my head at the
time. Now, however, 2SoD fills the important role of an up-to-date best
practices guide, which I find is often hard to compile in largish community
projects with fragmented documentation.

Not that the official docs aren't good, because they are; the 2SoD authors
just get to be a little more narrow and opinionated.

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kstrauser
I love - absolutely just adore - that the DRM on the PDF copy I bought is
having my name embedded in the cover. I can view it on my work desktop, my
home laptop, my iPad, or my Nook without jumping through any hoops at all.

~~~
pydanny
DRM free is the only way to go. :-)

~~~
kstrauser
Well, it's appreciated. Thanks for trusting and respecting your buyers!

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peteridah
For someone like me with relatively new django skills, I felt the book gave me
a very good feel for best practices used in the community; I feel the authors
did a good balancing act of informing readers of the best options available
while being firmly opinionated where necessary.

~~~
LVB
The opinions are what set it apart. I'm one who, when new to a topic, can
quickly end up in a deer-in-the-headlights state if faced with a large number
of competing approaches. I spend too much time flip-flopping and second
guessing until I build some history with whatever it is I'm working on.

The Two Scoops approach is: we're two Django developers with a lot of
experience, and here's _our_ approach that has been successful which you can
use. They go so far as to say, "you may hear about x/y/z, but here's why you
can safely ignore that in almost all cases..." Works very well for me.

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shavenwarthog2
I started a job recently that relied on much more Django skills than I had.
I'm a senior programmer, but my Django was dusty. Purchasing "Two Scoops of
Django" was a fantastic investment. The material is moderately dense, giving
"best practices" to a wide range of practical topics.

For me, a technical "here's what's really important" book is the most
valuable. Django docs (and the Django Book) are great, and I'm thrilled to
have them plus "Two Scoops" to use for my day job.

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thatthatis
Same thing I said in another thread, but it is relevant here too:

Books like this should really offer a money back guarantee.

Why? It signals quality and enables speculative purchasing.

The quality signal I think is obvious.

The speculative purchasing is an incremental sale. Emotionally, I'm not going
to purchase this book without a guarantee unless I've decided to commit time
to read it. However, with a guarantee I can buy it on the chance that I might
read it. It's not logical, I know, but it is how customers work emotionally.

Also, economically your guarantee is basically free. 99% of the time its not
worth my time to request the refund even if I don't like the book. The 1% is
if your book has made me emotionally angry due to its poor content (1 book
I've ever read).

But, people will game the system? No they won't. At least not in sufficient
volume to make it worth worrying about. If I want to scam a free copy of your
book, it's likely I can find a pirated version faster than I can get my wallet
and enter my credit card number.

~~~
rubinelli
And here's the clincher: the buyer already has the ability to ask for a refund
from Gumroad or a credit card chargeback. Those who really want their money
back will get it anyway.

~~~
pydanny
Please, please, please don't ever do credit card chargebacks. Merchants get
charged nasty fees each time that happens.

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Myrmornis
Looks great, will buy. This is not a criticism of this book: does anyone have
a hack to add syntax highlighting to any of the ebook formats? I understand
why colored syntax highlighting isn't provided in paper formats, but I don't
understand why publishers don't use it in ebooks on programming.

~~~
__mharrison__
It doesn't have to be a "hack". Most modern devices would support it just
fine. The main problem is the older kindle devices that only support the mobi7
format.

An author is likely to get dinged on reviews if formatting on older eink
devices is poor. So in practice the lowest common denominator wins out...

~~~
pydanny
You're right. We took it out because it looked awful on certain devices.

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neokya
We purchased this in initial release. This is good book, fills the gap between
developers and documentation.

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tterrace
Last time I used Django, I loved everything except class based views. I
thought my view code was much clearer and easier to work with after I switched
to FBV's. I see the book touches on both methods, but overall is it
opinionated one way or the other?

~~~
jimray
Yes. The authors like CBV's and make a strong case for why you would want to
use them.

Like you, I found CBV's to be wanting, particularly generic views, and all but
gave up. A combination of updates to the official docs with 1.5 and this book
made me reconsider and I'm glad I did.

~~~
tterrace
Thanks for the info, I'll probably give them another shot in my next project
after I go through the book.

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mladenkovacevic
Thank you for the EPUB version!

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anderspetersson
I bought and read the beta, will read it again now that the final version is
out.

------
mcintyre1994
As a student looking to do some work with Django, this is going to be
invaluable! Huge thanks, I've been looking for exactly this since I finished
the beginner tutorial!

------
emperorcezar
This book's meer existence has made my team's code better. Thank you.

