Two Scoops of Django final edition released
django.2scoops.org
django.2scoops.org
I wish more effort was put into updating the /free/ Django book (created by Jacob Kaplan-Moss and Adrian Holovaty, the creators of Django): http://www.djangobook.com/en/2.0/index.html -- what's fantastic about the Django book is it could be read by a complete novice with no prior experience of webapp development, indeed it introduces the patterns to a MVC framework in a great way with wonderful analogies. Novices are not going to have a fun time with TSoD.
edit: As stevejalim has pointed out, jacobian is taking pull requests to update the book for Django 1.5: https://github.com/jacobian/djangobook.com/blob/master/READM... -- have a go!
Sure, they could and they should, however I think TSoD might have dampened the community's efforts of improving and updating the free and more official 'Django Book' when it really needed the work.
TSoD was the effort of two individuals: they can spend their time how they like. I also can't blame them for wanting to make some money back on their time, given that writing a technical book is a non-trivial exercise.
It also takes a completely different set of skills to write a "beginner's book", which is really what the Django Book is.
Also, in my own case, just because I co-wrote TSoD doesn't mean I'm going to stop contributing to Django or it's documentation. In fact, writing it helped illuminate areas in the Django documentation that I believe I can improve. I hope readers of the book take the same approach. We all benefit from creating new and improved resources.
What makes you suspicious? I like TSoD because it fills that gap between the official docs and SO/mailing lists: it's a collection of "best practice" advice for those who have already had exposure to Django.
It's a completely different approach from the Django Book, and I don't think this is a problem. They are targeting different demographics.
Edit: Never mind - while it's good, I've already run into a couple areas where it seems to be severely outdated, so I could see why it wouldn't be advertised too heavily.
In any case, I would love to hear your feedback on other areas.
But TSoD is a different animal--it's not a "How to learn Django" guide, it's a "How to use Django in the real world" guide. It's not teaching you how to setup models and forms, it's the step beyond that--once you know how to use it, how do you use it well, in production environments? Things that most decent Django programmers know, but that are very hard for those just getting started to figure out except through trial, error, and hours of Googling. There's a big gap in literature here, and not just for Django. I'm happy to see someone addressing it.
I've not heard of any companies (except some colleges) funding actual books in a similar way -- probably because if you pay someone to improve Django, your product (based on Django) improves, and you presumably make money from your product.
Paying someone to write general documentation helps train both your and other's developers -- but the link to profit is more indirect -- writing proper text books is not something that makes sense to in-source for most institutions (shorter tutorials, technical documentation etc, being something different).
Sad, because Two Scoops is a wonderful book. Danny and Audrey spent a ton of time soliciting feedback from a veritable Who's Who of the Django community, and they took that feedback incredibly seriously. The result is a book that does a better job encapsulating how to write successful Django code than anything anyone else has written.
Angry, because of the implied slight against Audrey and Danny. It's sucks that you're too "suspicious" to consider that it might be getting so much attention because it's damned good. When you say that the book is getting "a peculiar amount of attention", it really sounds like you're suggesting some sort of scam. That assumption of bad faith is really offensive -- and completely incorrect. The book's getting attention because it's awesome.
Also angry because of of the implicit demands on my free time that you're making. Writing a book is fucking hard, and I haven't had the time to keep it updated. You're not entitled to my free time.
To end on a positive note, though: the book is getting updated. There's a new author working on a 3rd edition, to be released later this year. I'm not sure if the author wants to be named publicly, but it's someone I know and trust to do an great job.
I would like to volunteer some of my own free time to help. What would be the best way to contact you?
One is for beginners, another is for advanced users (2SoD)
p.d. I dislike the initial sentence of your comment as it implies certain greed from the authors. They are committed to the idea that money shouldn't be a barrier for knowledge and they will mail you a copy of the book if you ask for it, no strings attach. They sent one to me. My email didn't try to justify or imply I couldn't afford it, I just wanted to check if they would follow up in they claim. They sent my a copy right away and asked me why I was asking for one (are you a student, etc?). As he had already sent me a copy his question was of genuine interest imho. And to me the fact that he would sent the book to anyone who ask speaks volumes of his commitment to the idea that knowledge should be free.
My 2c.
Not that the official docs aren't good, because they are; the 2SoD authors just get to be a little more narrow and opinionated.
The Two Scoops approach is: we're two Django developers with a lot of experience, and here's our approach that has been successful which you can use. They go so far as to say, "you may hear about x/y/z, but here's why you can safely ignore that in almost all cases..." Works very well for me.
For me, a technical "here's what's really important" book is the most valuable. Django docs (and the Django Book) are great, and I'm thrilled to have them plus "Two Scoops" to use for my day job.
Books like this should really offer a money back guarantee.
Why? It signals quality and enables speculative purchasing.
The quality signal I think is obvious.
The speculative purchasing is an incremental sale. Emotionally, I'm not going to purchase this book without a guarantee unless I've decided to commit time to read it. However, with a guarantee I can buy it on the chance that I might read it. It's not logical, I know, but it is how customers work emotionally.
Also, economically your guarantee is basically free. 99% of the time its not worth my time to request the refund even if I don't like the book. The 1% is if your book has made me emotionally angry due to its poor content (1 book I've ever read).
But, people will game the system? No they won't. At least not in sufficient volume to make it worth worrying about. If I want to scam a free copy of your book, it's likely I can find a pirated version faster than I can get my wallet and enter my credit card number.
Charge backs in that case are sleazy.
A hack to parse and add to existing ebooks would be quite handy, though.
An author is likely to get dinged on reviews if formatting on older eink devices is poor. So in practice the lowest common denominator wins out...
Like you, I found CBV's to be wanting, particularly generic views, and all but gave up. A combination of updates to the official docs with 1.5 and this book made me reconsider and I'm glad I did.