I think it would be good to make a new documentation page suggesting various best practices - speaking from my point of view, it was hard for me to figure out what I *should* be doing, because everyone was doing it differently and each method had their own pros and cons. I ended up using a mishmash and was in a nightmare situation where nothing actually worked.
Obviously this page would need to be kept up to date - maybe even just "some people said these things about Django best practices, read these blogposts for information" would be fine - just some starting pointers. I know especially on Windows its not that uncommon to entirely neglect pip/virtualenv. On Jul 17, 2012 8:31 PM, "Alex Ogier" <alex.og...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 at 3:07 PM, Jeremy Dunck <jdu...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> I was wondering if people would be opposed to an opinionated tutorial? >> For example: you should use virtualenv and pip, south, should handle >> requirements this way, should prefer factories over fixtures, should >> have this project directory layout, etc. >> >> I could go either way - my preferred approach isn't right in all >> cases, and it might seem a distraction to the absolute beginner or a >> person who has their own opinions. > > > I think we should shy away from teaching "best practices" when they are > external to Django. Pointing people at other useful projects in an aside > may be useful, but making pip, virtualenv and south part of the mainline > tutorial is a bad idea for two reasons: (1) For people who are already > versed in python and/or web development best practices, it takes away from > what they want to learn: the core features of Django that differentiate it > from other frameworks. (2) For people who are brand new to programming > and/or python, it blurs boundaries and confuses them about what is really > important. A new programmer has no way to distinguish between "manage.py > startproject tutorial" and "pip install south". One is a core feature of > Django development, the other is a third-party Python tool to download a > third-party dependency. > > People can and do write blog posts all the time that go something like, > "How to install Django on Ubuntu 12.04" that give a series of six commands > to paste into a console. There's always the danger that they are incorrect > or misguided, but on the whole they are more likely to be relevant for > setting up a sane Django environment on some specific operating system than > we can be in a general tutorial. They are also dated and appropriately > transient: a blog post from 2008 can be forgiven for missing some latest > best practices, whereas a tutorial enshrined in Django's official > documentation cannot. > > Best, > Alex Ogier > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Django developers" group. > To post to this group, send email to django-developers@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > django-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/django-developers?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django developers" group. To post to this group, send email to django-developers@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to django-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/django-developers?hl=en.
