Standard approach

[Mike Dewhirst]

This list gets a lot of new people joining. They come from all cultures
and degrees of general competence. And list members have always made
them welcome and try to help as much as possible.

I would say to beginners - without thinking too hard - that the best
place to begin is the excellent Django documentation.  Read "Getting
started" https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.11/intro/ followed by "What
to read next" https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.11/intro/whatsnext/

However, there are many non-native-english speakers who find reading any
documentation just one extra hurdle instead of an open gate. When I see
such a request for help in getting started I admire the courage displayed.

Maybe we need more than a standardised docs approach. Perhaps a wiki
would help to display stable advice for different groups of beginners.
There have been some particularly illuminating threads in this list
revealing the merits of different beginner approaches. The Django blog
might be a permanent location for such threads. Maybe there already is a
spot for accumulated beginner wisdom?

There are lots of other resources and recent beginners are probably the
most competent to advise.

I really don't know because I don't have much of a problem reading docs.
And it is a while since I was a beginner.

Just thinking about this, the tutorial project might be valuable as a
real project frozen at a seriously simple level so that beginners can
browse the source and read the docstrings and comments. A  comment in
code might also carry a link to the documentation. Beginners who have
trouble with documentation should still be able to figure out the actual
code.

Mike

[Gerald Brown]

From what little I have read, it looks like https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/pinax-users/OvB4sB87Nr4 is trying to do what you are suggesting here.

[Paolo Chilosi]

It will be helpful to have a group/blog for Django beginner so we could share problems and solution, maybe this group is geared for more advance users.

[Mike Dewhirst]

On 16/05/2018 9:50 PM, Paolo Chilosi wrote:
> It will be helpful to have a group/blog for Django beginner so we
> could share problems and solution, maybe this group is geared for more
> advance users.

I don't think so. All levels of user should come here. I wasn't trying
to split the community. Everyone is able to help someone. I was
delighted to see this morning a bunch of people with only a few weeks
exposure to Django helping an absolute beginner to find some tutorials.

More advanced users tend to focus on the more advanced problems and
that's the way it should be.

My thought when I started this thread was that we need a place to send
absolute beginners where they can be sure the community has endorsed
(probably the wrong word) the ab initio material such as tutorials and
books etc.

Maybe this is that place after all?

My afterthought was to see the official Django tutorial established as
working code for those people who learn by examining code rather than
reading docs.

That would be a task for someone who has recently picked up Django and
understands the sort of commenting such code needs for beginners.

What do you think?

Mike

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "Django users" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
> an email to django-users...@googlegroups.com
> <mailto:django-users...@googlegroups.com>.
> To post to this group, send email to django...@googlegroups.com
> <mailto:django...@googlegroups.com>.
> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/django-users.
> To view this discussion on the web visit
> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/django-users/71b7fec5-f0b9-439d-ab00-352430b5e767%40googlegroups.com
> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/django-users/71b7fec5-f0b9-439d-ab00-352430b5e767%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Melvyn Sopacua]

On donderdag 17 mei 2018 00:44:32 CEST Mike Dewhirst wrote:

> More advanced users tend to focus on the more advanced problems and
> that's the way it should be.

Not always true. You tend to focus on things that show research and effort.
The level of competence then doesn't matter. It just so happens that anyone
who loads http://localhost:8000/ during the tutorial and gets a 404, then
tells the group the tutorial is wrong, clearly doesn't show research (asked
and answered a gazillion times) nor effort (read the tutorial again to see
your mistake, ans yes, it's possible to read over it again and again and not
see it, which is why you should use the search-before-asking algorithm).

So it looks as though more advanced users focus on more advanced problems, but
that certainly isn't the case - it just coincides with the fact that beginner
problems are often thrown into the group without any thought or research.

And can I just say, sometimes with an attitude unbecoming of someone who wants
others to spend time on his/her problems. But that's the nature of Open Source
communities.

This is rather elaborate, but should be any forum's charter:
http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

--
Melvyn Sopacua

[Mike Dewhirst]

On 20/05/2018 3:52 AM, Melvyn Sopacua wrote:
> On donderdag 17 mei 2018 00:44:32 CEST Mike Dewhirst wrote:
>
>> More advanced users tend to focus on the more advanced problems and
>> that's the way it should be.
> Not always true. You tend to focus on things that show research and effort.
> The level of competence then doesn't matter. It just so happens that anyone

> who loadshttp://localhost:8000/ during the tutorial and gets a 404, then

> tells the group the tutorial is wrong, clearly doesn't show research (asked
> and answered a gazillion times) nor effort (read the tutorial again to see
> your mistake, ans yes, it's possible to read over it again and again and not
> see it, which is why you should use the search-before-asking algorithm).
>
> So it looks as though more advanced users focus on more advanced problems, but
> that certainly isn't the case - it just coincides with the fact that beginner
> problems are often thrown into the group without any thought or research.

That is a very fair point Melvyn - and diplomatically very well put.

>
> And can I just say, sometimes with an attitude unbecoming of someone who wants
> others to spend time on his/her problems. But that's the nature of Open Source
> communities.

I agree. But it doesn't happen very often on this list.

> This is rather elaborate, but should be any forum's charter:
> http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

I'm not so sure wrt this forum. The first paragraph in that page
indicates to me it applies to ancient forums like some of the old Linux
lists where the "tough love" approach is very popular. In this forum, I
think the culture is historically more gentle and professionally
diplomatic. As you are proving :)

My focus in this thread was to maybe find a way to help newcomers who
have difficulty with documentation (and maybe with language) but for any
reason. You have to admit such people exist.

I do admit there are some lazy ones who fit the description in the
abovementioned first paragraph but they are surely children.

On reflection we probably only need another dot point "Other Django
resources" appended to the "First steps" list -
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.11/#first-steps

The link might say ... "Books, videos, training, tutorials" and point to
a summary page somewhere which further points to youtube videos from
conference sessions, tutorial videos, various books, training sites and
websites such as Django Girls and so on. Perhaps also the Django
tutorial source code nicely commented with links to the docs?

As I said earlier, I don't know where such a page should be hosted nor
how it should be laid out or updated but I'm sure if the community feels
it is valuable someone will see an opportunity and step up. Maybe it
already exists?

Then newcomers asking questions which more or less prove they haven't
looked at the docs - for whatever reason sometimes legitimate, sometimes
not - could be pointed to that page perhaps with an additional
recommendation for a particular resource to consume first.

I think I've probably said enough ...

Cheers

Mike