DjangoCon 2012 Talk

Where the Tutorials End & the Wild West Begins: How to bring new developers up to speed on Python and Django

Transcript

1. Julia Grace @jewelia
2. – The Backstory Who, what, where, why @jewelia
3. – @jewelia Hi, I’m Julia
4. – @jewelia # engineering jobs >> # engineers
5. – Not Everyone is a Djangonaut @jewelia
6. – “…Experience is fungible with time. That's rarely the case with culture fit or passion.” http://www.hackruiter.com/advice @jewelia
7. – A Few Disclaimers Just a few, I promise @jewelia
8. – @jewelia
9. – Y. M. M. V. (your miles may vary) @jewelia
10. – Giddy up! @jewelia The Adventure Begins
11. – I decide to join Tracy at @WeddingLovely @jewelia ™  She’s awesome, BTW.
12. – We did what we had to in order to launch fast. @jewelia ™  Remember: many startups/ideas stay in beta or are just “un-launched side projects” for years. ™  Tracy iterated fast & quickly launched the first version of our 5 directories (she did this all as a designer who learned Python and Django to accomplish this !!) ™  It was(is) my job to ensure our infrastructure allows us to keep growing at such tremendous rate.
13. – Our org structure @jewelia
14. – I didn’t speak Python (circa 2/2012) @jewelia
15. – Directories, oh my!
16. – ™ We could launch new directories very fast by copying old directories and creating new CSS templates, changing names. ™ When you’re launching your MVP (minimum value product), you must “move fast, break things”! @jewelia | julia@juliahgrace.com This was good because…
17. – ™ Significant code repetition ™ Inconsistencies in error handling and other functionality made debugging painful ™ 5 different Django Admin UIs ™ 5 Posgres DBs to query and join data across ™ Positive business growth meant making the fragmentation problem worse. This was bad because… @jewelia
18. – Launch fast, but remember: technical debt always comes due. @jewelia
19. – Full of LOLz! @jewelia How I Learned Django
20. – Step 1: Google (?) @jewelia
21. – https://twitter.com/i/#!/kennethlove/django-python/members Step 0: Ask Community @jewelia
22. – Step 1: Django Tutorial* @jewelia https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/intro/tutorial01/ https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.4/intro/tutorial01/ version There are also videos: http://gettingstartedwithdjango.com/resources/gigantuan.html *At the time http://gettingstartedwithdjango.com/ didn’t exist
23. – Step 2A: Enlightenment(?) @jewelia
24. – “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah” Syndrome @jewelia
25. – We’re not in polls anymore, Dorothy. @jewelia
26. – “Look over the code” @jewelia
27. – The best way to learn is to write production quality code that someone other than you can consume. @jewelia
28. – Step 2B: Fix a bug @jewelia ™  Be upfront about your team’s debugging best practices. ™  Devs may know how to debug other languages and environments, but not necessarily Python/ Django. ™ Django debug toolbar has saved me N times when I need to see SQL Django is executing: https://github.com/django-debug-toolbar/ django-debug-toolbar
29. – ™ Introduces notion that package might exist for features you want to build. Chose bugs that involve 3rd party packages http://www.djangopackages.com/ @jewelia
30. – ™  I chose single sign-on with Etsy (http://www.etsy.com/developers) ™  A lot of fun moving parts: –  OAuth2 –  3rd Party API –  Parsing Data –  Needed good error handling Step 3: Build a Feature @jewelia
31. – Step 3A: Build a Feature…as a project? ™  Best way to prevent “Django magic syndrome” ™  Votizen does this in their interview process: https://github.com/votizen/careers/blob/ master/RemoteCodingProblem.rst @jewelia
32. – Learning Django != Learning Python Python Amount of Python I learned & understood while learning Django @jewelia
33. – ™  Download IPython to practice writing Python: http://ipython.org/ ™  Saved PDF version of Think Python for quick searching: http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython ™  Printed out this cheat sheet & hung it over my desk: http://hairysun.com/downloads/ BegPythonHandout.pdf Step 4: Learn a Little Python @jewelia
34. – Step 5: Build Something that Breaks Something Else django-hosts + + django + DB routing 1 Django Project 5 Postgres DBs 5 Django Applications ™ …or build something that breaks almost everything else.
35. – ™  All 5 Django applications used: –  auth-user –  taggit –  django-comments –  admin (*this actually worked great!) …but I had 5 different auth-user, taggit, django-comments tables in 5 different DBs. Why the Fail @jewelia
36. – Rise from the FAIL ashes django-hosts + + 1 Postgres DB 1 Django Project 1 Django Application @jewelia ™  There is a time and place when code must be completely rewritten…into something simpler.
37. – ™ That is a whole other talk. ™ Solution: python script + SQLAlchemy + namespaced all the data ™ …but come up with tests beforehand to check the migration was successful! ™ Tests could be as simple as just counting to ensure *all* the data migrated. Data Migration @jewelia
38. – @jewelia Thanks! Slides: http://speakerdeck.com/u/jewelia