This is an OK book that covers lots of different areas, and by the end of it you should be able to build a functional website with Django. There are certain questionable practices in the book, e.g. in building the first blog webapp, you'd follow the book to create a form, where if you refresh the page, you'd end up submitting the same request over and over. This is generally bad web development practice, whereas you could've followed the Django quickstart to do it right with an http redirect.
While the above errors can be gradually corrected once you start reading other more credible sources, my complaints are mostly in the writing.
First, the author explains the how but not the why. Each chapter moves you through several steps of building a website but it never provides an overarching view of what you're learning and doesn't explain why you must do what you're doing. For example, at one point the book introduces PostgreSQL and explains how you could create certain models for your entities, but it doesn't walk you through the models in the actual database and does not explain how these data work together with Django.
Second, the material is not well organized. In every step you do following this book, you're putting together a piece of the puzzle. At the end of the section, the puzzle is solved, but you have no idea how these pieces are working together. For example, the book leads you to create a model and a view, asks you to register a url, and guides you to write an html file. Boom, it works in your browser, but you're left clueless how these different elements are glued together by Django. A better book would've explained the underlying mechanics of Django that makes this work.
Third, the writing can be improved. I understand the author is a foreign international, so he's not extremely well-versed in English writing, but the editor has failed their job at proofreading the book and making sure the book reads well. For example, when the author wants to express "first, you must do this", he would say "initially, you do this", but it sounds as if I'd already completed the step, whereas in reality it's something I'm yet to accomplish. The lack of editing in these subtleties create a great deal of confusion for the reader and makes one desire a better written book.
Overall, the author is somewhat knowledgeable and I've learned a decent amount from this book, but the poor editing and subpar organization of the knowledge makes me wish I'd picked another book instead.
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20 reviews
Nitpicker
Could use better writing and editing
11 August 2020 -
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Amazon Customer
Perhaps The Best Book On Django
26 June 2020 -
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Brian Hatzelhoffer
Difficult but educational if you are motivated.
19 October 2020 -
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Alex
This is amazing book!
4 September 2020 -
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Monica Yu
Best Django Book out there
19 June 2020 -
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