Last week I started on a quest to learn a new programming language and framework - Python and Django. This weekend I finally stepped out of tutorial-land and wrote my first Django app - a snazzy todo list.

It’s not the most whiz-bang app out there but rest assured that it does have a killer admin (thanks to Django) as well as public view of my todos and an RSS feed to make me fully Web 2.0.I also installed Ubuntu Server in a virtual machine (thanks VMWare) and then setup my app via FastCGI/Lighttpd and also through Apache/mod_python just for practice.

Python and Django both have an amazing set of documentation to help you understand what is happening as you make API calls. I enjoyed the “no magic” approach that Django takes to its framework the “its all magic” of RoR - it really helps you learn the framework quickly by knowing up front what is going on and why. The install and configuration went smoothly on both Linux and Windows (after Jacob helped me figure out a very simple pathing problem in Windows - thanks!).

I was pleasantly surprised by Django. Coming from a PHP and Ruby on Rails point of view, I was excited to be able to transfer the same set of basic knowledge (objects/MVC) over to the Django framework to get things rolling almost immediately. All I had to do was learn a few basics on Python’s language and figure out the available methods to call.
I’ll be playing with Django a bit more and trying to write out apps for each of the main things we do at K-fx2 - ecommerce/payment processing, submittal forms, user areas, CMS etc.

Looking forward to learning more!