MY PATH IN LEARNING DJANGO

Django is a powerful python web framework, it is easy to learn but also easy to get stuck in. I will be giving the path I took in learning Django, I am not an expert but I know this article will help a couple of beginners.

I started learning python around 2015, while in secondary school but had no laptop, 2017 November I started learning Django using a mini Dell laptop with 1gb ram and an Intel atom processor. It was extremely slow but I had the determination to learn to build web sites no matter the obstacles. I got started with Django using TheNewBoston Django tutorials on YouTube; I picked TheNewBoston because most of the YouTube programming tutorials I have taken was from TheNewBoston’s YouTube Channel. He is very fun to watch and he intentionally omits necessary things during his tutorials so he can run into errors and teach how to solve those problems and why omitting the solution returned an error. While using Bucky Robert’s Channel(TheNewBoston’s name is Bucky) , I didn’t really understand what middlewares were and understanding how to authenticate users and register them took me quite some time before I realized I didn’t need to memorize the code, all I needed was to understand the logic behind it then writing them in codes will be easier.

I got done with Bucky’s tutorial after some weeks but I didn’t feel satisfied with all I have learnt, not that the tutorial was not good enough but I just felt that I haven’t learnt enough from that tutorial so I decided to search for another tutorial on YouTube then I found Max Goodridge Django Tutorial on YouTube. It took me over a month to finish this tutorial as it contained more details compared to Bucky’s tutorial though Bucky’s tutorial was easier to understand. When I got done with both tutorials, I decided to challenge myself with a social network project(the link to the github repo http://www.github.com/taycode/chatter ). It was not easy for my skill level then but I googled my way out, the social media platform was meant to be similar to Twitter where we have this page that your posts are visible to the public and we have another peer to peer messaging; this was the challenging aspect of the project but after being able to implement it, I felt I had learnt a lot. My laptop got stolen (28th August 2018, I will never forget that day) with all those codes in it but I will list notable features I added to the project.

1. Peer to peer messaging

2. Following and Unfollowing

3. Uploading Profile Pictures

4. Liking and Unliking Posts

5. Deleting and Editing Posts

6. User Profiles

It is not a big project but it is something that made me learn more in Django which I didn’t learn initially with the tutorial videos I watched.

After months without a laptop, my dad gave his laptop to me so I could continue my coding (this was March 2019), so I kickstarted another project; Shortayn ( http://shortayn.herokuapp.com/ , http://github.com/taycode/shortayn/ ) with the help of a friend named Olamide Samuel(Goldin) who helped me with the front End ( https://github.com/gold-olar ).

Shortayn is a url shortener which allows you pick a custom name for your shortened link in this format “shortayn.herokuapp.com”. I am yet to finish this because of personal reasons but lemme state what I have added to project

1. Being able to create shortened link and delete them

2. All users cannot create more than 5links

3. when “shortayn.herokuapp.com” is visited, you get redirected

4. amount of visits for each link gets counted after ever the link is visited

These are very easy features but lemme list features I plan adding to the project.

1. Being able to track amount of visits according to the countries they have been visited from

2. creating a graph to track traffic of visits

These features are more technical than the chatter project, but googling my way out will make me learn a lot. Basically the trick is challenging yourself and googling your way all the way, slowly you will reach the level of intermediate, also working for clients or companies or start ups also makes you better as you end up working with different technologies.

twitter: @Taycode

github: http://github.com/taycode/