
Getting Started with Django - gklein
http://gettingstartedwithdjango.com/en/lessons/introduction-and-launch
======
tsumnia
While others are complaining about all the up front set up; this is actually
something I like. Base tutorials always seem to be missing that 'something'
that takes what you've learned and turns it into a real world application.

Even if its not step one, I would prefer more tutorials to have a full fledged
'Getting Set Up' section; even if it becomes arbitrary. It makes sure everyone
can get on the same page no matter where they come from.

~~~
lelandbatey
I agree, and in this case it's setting up a very consistent environment that
will be almost _exactly_ the same as the one he's going to be using.

Additionally, these are the actual procedures you could use to set up a very
real and serious tool. I'm loving this!

~~~
yannis
This is an excellent idea and the instructions almost worked as is even on an
old windows vista machine (with the exception I had to download PuTTY, but the
messages were very intuitive. What is missing is perhaps a comments page, if
nothing else to thank the author.

------
hrayr
I like where this series is headed, I will certainly be following it.

A few suggestions on how to improve the consumption of these videos.

1) Break down the video into smaller bite sized chunks to provide for natural
breaks. Unlike movies where it's more a passive viewing experience,
educational videos, especially ones where you're expected to follow along,
require a lot more mental engagement. This makes it difficult to sit through a
50 minute video in one sitting.

3) Use a basic video editor (e.g ScreenFlow) to zoom into the sections you're
working on. It's difficult to follow what you're doing when viewing the entire
screen, text is tiny and difficult to read. Also forcing me to go into full
screen mode to view the text, doesn't help when I want to follow along.

Overall, I love it. Keep up the good work.

~~~
kennethlove
When the official download comes out in a day or two, it'll have chapter
markers in it for QuickTime, so you'll be able to jump around as needed.

------
iuguy
Wow, this looks really good. A decent django tutorial that covers all the ops
side is somewhat lacking I feel, and this certainly looks pretty full.

How do you plan to fund the other lessons?

~~~
kennethlove
The Kickstarter is funding all 10 originally planned episodes plus ~5 more
covering FAQ-type situations.

~~~
iuguy
Is it worth putting a link to the kickstarter on the front page? Would
certainly help explain a lot about the project and if it's still running
people can chip in.

~~~
kmfrk
Probably not a bad idea, since a lot of people are (self-entitedly)
misunderstanding the scope of the project.

------
pydanny
I'm very glad that you created this video series. It's going to be incredibly
helpful for many developers. Keep up the good work!

~~~
Chico75
This seems to be the perfect video to get setup before reading your book,
which is very light on the "proper setup". I imagine that a book might not be
the best format for that, or simply that this is not the content your main
audience expect to start with.

~~~
pydanny
Indeed, it's a good corollary. :-)

~~~
datashaman
From Wikipedia: A corollary is a statement that follows readily from a
previous statement.

Huh?

~~~
huxley
That's just one of the formal definitions:

<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/corollary>

check out the second definitions part a and b:

2.a : something that naturally follows : result

2.b : something that incidentally or naturally accompanies or parallels

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zalew
chef, vagrant, ubuntu, apt-get, pip, virtualenv, heroku, ssh.. oh there it is,
sth about learning django. I'm saying it not to diss your work, but don't you
think setting up a linux env on a vm and signing up to heroku shouldn't be the
point of a django tutorial? point explained in another discussion about zed's
approach to writing 'learn x the hard way'
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4961593>

~~~
jiggy2011
One of the thing I usually find hardest about trying out any new web-stack is
not necessarily writing the code but wrangling with all the ecosystem BS
around it.

It's nice for a tutorial to acknowledge this and give you a VM to play around
with.

~~~
raverbashing
Yes this is hard. In Django especially, not very easy for beginners.

But put it at the end of the tutorial, not at the beginning

Come on guys, they're doing the tutorial to learn Django, not "all the things
around it" (which are important, but it is not Django).

~~~
jiggy2011
This is true, but you need to do battle with "all the things around it" in
order to get the thing to work properly in the first place.

I agree that to learn a language you should not focus on "operational" stuff,
but once you get into web frameworks that line can get a little blurry.

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rhokstar
>>Learning an editor, the terminal for you computer, and a new language is not
something to do while learning a framework.

I made this mistake when I was learning Ruby. Ha! Good times!

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DrHankPym
I'm looking for a good Django tutorial that includes examples of developing
with BDD and TDD. The way I learned Rails included RSpec and Cucumber, and
that made a huge difference.

~~~
pydanny
Try <http://www.tdd-django-tutorial.com/>

~~~
th
The TDD Django Tutorial is both a good example of Django TDD and a good
introduction to using Selenium for integration/functional tests. It was my
first introduction to both.

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mladenkovacevic
The video was fairly long and I wish there was a way for specific sections in
the video to be indexed so one can just to sections that are of interest. Then
again the text transcript is below so I guess that's an easy way to look up
what is needed. I am particularly interested in all the different ways
developers set up their settings files. I use a solution which works but I
always feel could be a bit more elegant as it requires passing a
DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE variable when activating a virtualenv (different
settings file is activated depending on whether it's a development, staging or
production environment)... I think I copied this method from Zachary Voase's
blog. Maybe the method you use is better for Heroku, I'm not sure.

------
drewtemp
The Getting Started with Django series is off to a great start. Kenneth's
soothing voice and background music makes it easy on the ears to listen to.
The video quality is also great. The initial subjects are, in my opinion,
essential to almost every web developer working in a multi-environment
setting. Not to mention a great introduction for those just getting into
Django. I'm looking forward to more of Getting Started with Django from
Kenneth to see what else is in store for those new to Django and to those that
utilize Django often.

------
kphill
This is awesome, thanks for posting this.

I'm having trouble getting the VM going and I have a pretty vanilla set up so
I'm worried the requirements might need some more detail such as version
numbers.

I'm running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on an i3-2350M and all BIOS settings for
virtualization are enabled.

I installed Vagrant 1.0.6 and VirtualBox 4.2.6.

Vagrant gives the following error:

[default] The guest additions on this VM do not match the install version of
VirtualBox! This may cause things such as forwarded ports, shared folders, and
more to not work properly. If any of those things fail on this machine, please
update the guest additions and repackage the box.

And running directly from the VirtualBox GUI gives an error:

Failed to open a session for the virtual machine gswd_1358906798.

VT-x features locked or unavailable in MSR. (VERR_VMX_MSR_LOCKED_OR_DISABLED).

My hardware is 6 months old, would you expect people with 4 year old hardware
to run this without trouble?

Any ideas would be appreciated.

~~~
kennethlove
I'm running VirtualBox 4.2.4 but I would think, since it creates the VM when
you `vagrant up`, that it wouldn't matter what version of VB you were running.
So that's odd.

The Vagrant version I have is 1.0.5, just for completeness sake.

I just downloaded the zip file again to check, and there's nothing in there
(at least that I can find) that mentions a version of VirtualBox. You're also
the first person to mention a problem like this (one other person had a
problem after running the VM with getting packages from Google).

You could try downgrading, or, since you're on a sane OS, just running
everything sans VM. You'll need to install Git and PostgreSQL yourself,
though.

Let me know if anything changes, please. I'll ask around and let you know if I
find anything out.

Thanks, and sorry for your problems.

~~~
kphill
Looks like my problems were completely my fault. On my ThinkPad the
virtualization setting is in the BIOS under Security and it was not set
correctly. There were some other settings under CPU that I initially thought
were the right ones. I'm sorry to waste your time.

~~~
kennethlove
Glad you found out what it was!

------
dysoco
Wow just what I needed!

As a Desktop/Systems developer I find it hard to integrate all the HTML - CSS
- JS - Python and then deploy a Web Application, I've been taking a look at
the Django Book but it kinds of assumes you know Web Development.

This looks like just what I need, I'll finish my Poll application and check
your tutorials.

------
davs
Kenneth, sorry if this has been asked, but how often will you be releasing
videos ? Monthly ?

Also thank you for making series ;)

~~~
kennethlove
The plan is to do 1-2 per month, ideally about 1 every 2 weeks. I have to do
them in my (and my editor's) off time, so some months that may slip.

~~~
porter
Any chance you can add a subscribe by email form so we can be notified when
you release new videos?

~~~
kennethlove
I've added a link to subscribe to the mailing list to the top of the site.

------
peterhajas
Why do I need to go through the Django tutorial before starting "Getting
Started with Django"? I thought this would be my first stop, not something
after the official Polls app.

~~~
gojomo
Why would you want this to duplicate material well-covered by the official-
Django-site tutorial?

Even if you like this format better, the official-site tutorial is pretty
good, and helpfully sets a common baseline for all Django learners (and all
followup teaching). Having a 'canon' helps future steps, even if they diverge.

------
alexakarpov
why is that HN crowd is so much into Django? Every day I see something Django-
related on the top page. I feel like I'm left out... is Django like the
world's number one web framework (for hackers)?

~~~
ianstallings
Because of the love for Python in general. I used Django to fairly good
success last year and I'm glad to see it's still going strong. It's far from
he Drupal where everything is a CMS option. It's more of a developer-centric
CMS system with some sugar on top. Check it out if you are interested in
learning. It's a fairly simple platform. The headaches, in my experience,
comes from the documentation. It lags behind and the community moves quickly.

~~~
alexakarpov
Thanks; sounds like I really should learn at least some.

------
mehulkar
This is great. Just one thing though:

body {width: 80%; margin:0 auto; min-width:1080px;}

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asparagui
a minor nit: fix the spelling in the header "Getting to Heorku"

~~~
kennethlove
done

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TruthElixirX
Is there a way to save HN stories, aside from commenting on them? I don't want
to leave a pointless comment just so I can find it later (I didn't _want_ to
leave this one.).

~~~
walkon
Upvote it and it will show in your "Saved Stories" page (link on your profile
page).

~~~
ntsh
I don't think it works for me. Maybe I don't have enough Karma or it is a bug.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4462292>

------
DustinCalim
Step 1. Unchain him.

