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Mastering Django: Core: The Complete Guide to Django 1.8 LTS
Mastering Core is a completely revised and updated version of the original Django Book, written by Adrian Holovaty and Jacob Kaplan-Moss - the creators of Django.
The main goal of this book is to make you a Django expert. By reading this book, you'll learn the skills needed to develop powerful websites quickly, with code that is clean and easy to maintain.
This book is also a programmer's manual that provides complete coverage of the current Long Term Support (LTS) version of Django. For developers creating applications for commercial and business critical deployments, Mastering Core provides a complete, up-to-date resource for Django 1.8LTS with a stable code-base, security fixes and support out to 2018.
The main goal of this book is to make you a Django expert. By reading this book, you'll learn the skills needed to develop powerful websites quickly, with code that is clean and easy to maintain.
This book is also a programmer's manual that provides complete coverage of the current Long Term Support (LTS) version of Django. For developers creating applications for commercial and business critical deployments, Mastering Core provides a complete, up-to-date resource for Django 1.8LTS with a stable code-base, security fixes and support out to 2018.
- GenresProgrammingTechnology
780 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 19, 2016
24 people are currently reading
44 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 9, 2019
Django is a fast-moving world. This book is not that old, and yet many of the details of the code in it are already semi-obsolete. Just trying to follow along with the install instructions will throw up some errors. But I want to set that aside, because one cannot fault an author for writing in a world of developers who "move fast and break things". I want to focus on the pedagogical approach in this book, and what you will and will not learn from it.
George has a frustrating habit of starting some of the most crucial chapters (the ones explaining models, views, and forms) with the wrong way of doing things. As in, "here's a dumb way to code a page that will display the current time and date, and here's a more complicated example of an even dumber way". Then, in an amazing reveal, he says, that was dumb--Django has a smarter way! Here's a brief example, and for the rest, make sure to read the Appendix and the Django documentation! By the time you get to that point, your attention is flagging, and you've already worked through the dumb way of doing things instead of starting with the smart way. Wouldn't it have been far more effective to start with the proper way of doing things instead? The reader's good will is not taxed, and you have not allowed the reader to develop even rudimentary bad habits in the process.
I found the models chapter maddening. George assumes you know SQL, even though he says he doesn't assume database knowledge. Of course, to someone who does know SQL, it is helpful to translate Django models into corresponding SQL. But in the process of meticulously showing you what each model and query look like in SQL, he leaves out a few pretty fundamental concepts. He uses the "book, author, publisher" database example, and for the most part focuses on publishers as his main example. But he doesn't really show you how to relate the other two models to the publisher model--and it would have probably been a lot more helpful to focus on, say, book models instead of publishers. After all, this hypothetical example library database would probably have far more books than publishers, so it would have been more instructive to show his readers how to construct a page that queries, say, books by particular authors. And honestly, I don't care how it looks in SQL, since you told me explicitly that Django makes it unnecessary to interact with the database directly, anyway. In the process of playing with the examples, I started running into frustrating, cryptic errors that the book did not illuminate at all; it took a lot of poking around online and in the documentation to figure out why things weren't working, or how to fix them.
So by all means read this book if you find that his rhetorical style works for you. But do not expect it to save you from spending most of your time searching StackOverflow and reading the Django docs anyway; if you are trying to do something practical with this framework, most of the answers will not be in a book like Mastering Django.
George has a frustrating habit of starting some of the most crucial chapters (the ones explaining models, views, and forms) with the wrong way of doing things. As in, "here's a dumb way to code a page that will display the current time and date, and here's a more complicated example of an even dumber way". Then, in an amazing reveal, he says, that was dumb--Django has a smarter way! Here's a brief example, and for the rest, make sure to read the Appendix and the Django documentation! By the time you get to that point, your attention is flagging, and you've already worked through the dumb way of doing things instead of starting with the smart way. Wouldn't it have been far more effective to start with the proper way of doing things instead? The reader's good will is not taxed, and you have not allowed the reader to develop even rudimentary bad habits in the process.
I found the models chapter maddening. George assumes you know SQL, even though he says he doesn't assume database knowledge. Of course, to someone who does know SQL, it is helpful to translate Django models into corresponding SQL. But in the process of meticulously showing you what each model and query look like in SQL, he leaves out a few pretty fundamental concepts. He uses the "book, author, publisher" database example, and for the most part focuses on publishers as his main example. But he doesn't really show you how to relate the other two models to the publisher model--and it would have probably been a lot more helpful to focus on, say, book models instead of publishers. After all, this hypothetical example library database would probably have far more books than publishers, so it would have been more instructive to show his readers how to construct a page that queries, say, books by particular authors. And honestly, I don't care how it looks in SQL, since you told me explicitly that Django makes it unnecessary to interact with the database directly, anyway. In the process of playing with the examples, I started running into frustrating, cryptic errors that the book did not illuminate at all; it took a lot of poking around online and in the documentation to figure out why things weren't working, or how to fix them.
So by all means read this book if you find that his rhetorical style works for you. But do not expect it to save you from spending most of your time searching StackOverflow and reading the Django docs anyway; if you are trying to do something practical with this framework, most of the answers will not be in a book like Mastering Django.
June 6, 2017
I find it is very difficult to understand.
March 29, 2017
While containing little flash or rhetorical flair, the author accomplishes what his goal is: to provide an overarching guide on how to use the Django framework to develop a fully fledged dynamic website through this book.
The book is broken up into three main parts. The first part (chapters 1-6) covers the core functions of the Django framework and how they are tied together to create various apps that are part of an overarching website. The second part (chapters 7-13) covers the more intermediate parts of the Django software. This covers pieces of the framework that you will have to add onto the core website in order to get your website up to production. The final section (14-21) cover all of the bells and whistles a developer would like to add to have a fully fledged website. There are a few appendices added onto the end of the book that serve as a reference guide for all of the functions of the book.
Overall, I give the book a 5/5 because it does what it sets out to do, which is to provide an overarching guide on how to use the Django framework in a logical format.
The book is broken up into three main parts. The first part (chapters 1-6) covers the core functions of the Django framework and how they are tied together to create various apps that are part of an overarching website. The second part (chapters 7-13) covers the more intermediate parts of the Django software. This covers pieces of the framework that you will have to add onto the core website in order to get your website up to production. The final section (14-21) cover all of the bells and whistles a developer would like to add to have a fully fledged website. There are a few appendices added onto the end of the book that serve as a reference guide for all of the functions of the book.
Overall, I give the book a 5/5 because it does what it sets out to do, which is to provide an overarching guide on how to use the Django framework in a logical format.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews