I’ve been quite busy in the last weeks, first on the job and then being on a one week skiing holiday. Hence i wasn’t able to report on a couple of new books i bought recently. So lets do this. In order to be chronical first the ‘oldest book’
The Definitive Guide to django – Web development Done Right
I nearly finished reading “The Definitive Guide to django – Web development Done Right” by Adrian Holovaty and Jacob- Kaplan Moss. As you already might have guessed i’m a great fan of Adrian’s efforts on “data-based” / “data-backed” journalism. What you might not be aware of (unless you are following my DailyDeli posts) is that i’m very interested in all things Python. Being originally an AI researcher doing most of his work in either Smalltak or CommonLisp/CLOS, i guess Python is something like a natural fit (at least i learned from quite some other with the same background that they had the same motivation).At least when you started looking for a “mainstream” alternative for these two computer languages more than a two of years ago and did not get caught by the “RoR” hype.
At work i personally started using Python in conjunction with Zope for some serious web development (like the web frontend for the music download store used among others by AOL Germany and a number of mobile news websites) around six years ago. Being the only serious python-based web framework, Zope back then was a natural choice. But it brought as an added bonus that zope.com was working with media companies.
I started looking for alternatives to Zope 2 around 1 1/2 years ago (and no Zope 3 didn’t look like an alternative back then and does not look like one today). At Europython2006 i had the chance to get an overview about the python web framework state of the art. For me personally django stood out from the crowd due to the fact being based on the needs of a newspaper website and it’s pragmatic but nevertheless principled and clean design.
Since i hadn’t found time to write some code in order get a “real feeling” i was eager to get the book and read through it while commuting. All in all i liked reading it. There were only a few places where i found some minor errors, and generally the questions that formed in my head were answered only a few paragraphs later. So my positive view on django has been confirmed and i’m ready to get my hands dirty.
Hence i tried to set some spare time aside and go through the book (a least selected chapters) a second time, this time with my MBP sitting right next to it. And to do some coding in django, and learn about GeoDjango, how to use S3 and investigate on other non RDBMS data backends etc.
Other books
I also bought some more books on Javascript and jQuery in particular (I intend to focus on jQuery as my main JavaScript library), a book on open street map (in german) and a more research oriented book on TextMining.
- Pro JavaScript Techniques Amazon (US)
- JQuery in Action Amazon (US)
- OpenStreetMap
- The Text Mining Handbook Amazon (US)
BTW: Relations is intended to be ads free: Forever. This is the reason why i still holding back on embedding deep links to the books in the various amazons stores (International and German). But i’m on the verge of considering these links rather a service than an ad. What do you think