Django

I thought last friday was hard. Boy, was I wrong. I had scheduled about four hours to do one of Brad’s modules everyday. And today was such a bear. Life happened. There were lots of interruptions. I tried to soldier on nonetheless. Eight hours in, and I am still only halfway through the module. That’s when I decided to give myself some grace and let it go. Note to self, stick to the time. Not the module. If the module does not get over, there is always tomorrow. (saying this, as I look at the pile of stuff, I’ve left undone today.) ...

Today was a slog. Life got in the way, so lost some scheduled time. So decided to work some more in the evening. What did I do/learn today? Learnt the basics of models, and migrations today. Learnt how to install PostgreSQL, so that I could simualate a production environment. This took eons, all because, I did not realise that I (or some other program I installed) had already installed Postgres in the past, and so I went down a rabbit hole of looking at logs and figuring out ports and why I could not talk to the database I wanted. Am slowly realising that I what working with Django actually is, is to take things that Django provides and then customise them to my needs. And Django provides a lot. Python is just the way I express what I want. Learnt how to write a model file and then use migrations to actually go alakazaam and make them real in my database. Learnt how to rejig the default admin panel, that comes with Django While the stock admin site is pretty function Brad walked me through customising it to add brand colours and adding / changing functionality. For e.g. adding in a search field, so I could search by names. I should be reading Django documentation and then playing with all the features. Time to call it a day. More on Monday. ...

Today was a really good day. Did four productive hours of work. Managed to focus, and follow the lessons and write my own code. What did I do/learn today? I need to write a lot more code. I need to write lots of HTML/Javascript, to gain a better understanding. I thought I could get by with basic stuff, but the more I learn Django, the more I see that it works hand in hand with the content and styling that I have written. (Right now there is a set of templates for the course, but I can see myself taking much longer, if this was not there.) The MVT flow is now gradually making more sense to me. What stuff belongs to a model? Or a view? I would listen to the instructor, (Brad), then pause the video and then try to do it myself first. Or at least think through the process and mentally prep an answer. And then go see what he did, and how he did it. Worked with Apps and URLs and Templates and learnt to write code across these files, wiring one up to the other, so that the page would render.

Meta post. More than Django itself, I am beginning the phase of my journey, where now I write code and install programs and do all the things. Am committing 2 hours to this daily, on weekdays along with a tiny what did I learn post. I am beginning with Django itself, and if I have difficulties with any underlying concepts, I will quickly dive down and write code to understand those. Learning along with Brad Traversy’s Python Django Dev To Deployment. It’s a bit old, but I like the way he teaches. And to make sure I am not cargo culting, I am doing this with Django 3 (the course has Django 2) ...

Enough learning. I now have to drill what I’ve learnt over the past few weeks and months by writing lots of code. Been noodling around with what that might look like in my head. Here’s what I got. After tentatively coding up stuff in a couple of domains and after a short chat with a friend, I realise I love writing code for the web. I love reading. I love to write on my blog. I love that with just a few keypresses, my words can be read by anyone on the web, no gatekeeper required. I would love to write code to enable this for more people. I would love to play and tinker and push at the boundaries of this domain. This intersection of all this is web development. Ergo, I want to become a web developer. ...

Updated version of the post. I seem to have somehow, mangled the old one. I’ll just blame it on the gremlins in the cloud. I’ve been “soft” looking for a job, since the end of last year when I learnt the basics of Python. (Want me to come work with you as a junior developer? Here’s my resume!) And I’ve had rejection after rejection after rejection. I apparently am good. I have skills. I could be an asset for companies. But I am not “quite” what folks are looking for, not quite right for them. I am not quite what it is, folks are looking for, to take chance on. I am a square peg … ...