Transcript: Resources & Mentorship

I'm Carlton Gibson, joined as ever by Will Vincent.

How are you, Will?

How are you, Carlton?

Uh today we were just going to talk about some resources that are available in the Django um Django world, the Django ecosystem.

Because quite probably you've heard of them, but maybe there's one or two that you haven't.

So let's start.

What's your favorite resource, Will?

Um that's why I do this podcast.

Like pick your brain on Django things.

But assuming that's not available to everyone, it is.

That's your number one Django resource, folks.

And you can email us questions, uh, Django Chat uh on Twitter at chat Django or DjangoChatpodcast at gmail.com.

Hit us up.

So we'll link to that.

So it's forum at Django Project.com.

This was set up only a couple months ago.

The quality is fantastic.

I mean, it's all the heavy hitters of Django.

So if you have a question about Django and you don't see an answer, or it's maybe more of like a subjective question that doesn't fit into Stack Overflow.

So for example, I posted one on top third-party packages.

Amazing discussion on there.

People should use this resource.

There are experts on there waiting to help, and I think it fills the void that you know, Stack Overflow is good for tiny, discrete questions, but these larger ones like architecture or logic, um, the community wants to have these discussions and this is set up for it.

So I would say right now the forum is the number one place, and it has use, but it's not being used as much as it should.

Um I'll throw, I'll throw in a number two and then I'll let you get some in.

My number two would be the conference videos for DjangoCon, PyCon.

I've got a full list on the awesome Django repo, but these videos are gold.

They are amazing instructions from the top people trying to make it presentable.

There's what, 40 every year at each conference.

There's gonna be DjangoCon Africa this year.

Go on YouTube, do Django Con and search for whatever is top of mind, and you'll find amazing content.

So those are my top two.

What about you, Carlton?

Well, I I'm gonna comment on your top two before I

it's allowed.

Um so there's for years they've been the Django users group.

Uh the Google groups.

So there's Django users and Django groups.

That'd be

number three.

There's lots of people subscribe to those, but they you know, over the years they've kind of got a bit stale.

And I don't know that Google Groups is the best UI or the best.

I mean, I I I get those updates.

It's I mean, there are still people helping on there, but it's I think just yeah, the format is not um not what you would do from scratch these days.

And you know, it is lively, and there are you know, you can get direct answers from Andrew Godwin himself, and you know, what more can you ask for?

People like that.

So yeah, no, the early users, that would that would be the other one.

I mean, but it's uh yeah, it and that's much more active.

That is very I mean, I get an update, yeah, I don't know, it's 20 questions back and forth a day or something.

Yeah, maybe the I I I don't think the format is as good as a discourse or a Discord board would be.

Anyway, so try the for forum.jjango project.com and then yes, absolutely plus one plus a hundred on the conference videos.

You know, that if you want to know how I don't know, Django works with Postgres Indexes or anything, just there's a video on it, and you can sit back, watch the video, you put it on double speed, you can you know and you look at them and they're on YouTube.

And the this video on this absolutely awesome video on Postgres Indexes has got 428 views, and you're like, What?

It should have 4,000 and you know.

Um well we'll keep beating the horn on that.

People should people should check these out.

Uh what else?

So I subscribe to blogs, but the who how do you find out about these blogs?

Well, there's a great aggregator.

So if you go to the Django project website and you go to the community section, there's a uh community aggregator feed, which is like you can submit your blog to be included, your RSS feed to be included in that.

And so it kind of you know it's it's got all number of blogs on it, and all of a sudden you'll be like, oh, that's an interesting blog post.

Oh, who's this person?

Ah and that's a so that's that's one thing that I've over the years have found awesome blog posts about.

But years before that, I used a thing called Net News Wire, and that's just recently been updated and re-released as an open source and free um app.

And I'm gonna download that and give that another go because and they've gonna have an iS iOS version of that as well.

Um and you know, people tell me that RSS is dead, but apparently I still use it.

I mean, I

still use it.

Right, there you are then.

Um there's also I'll plug a resource.

So there's a uh new Django newsletter that I'm co-running called uh so Django slash news, where we it's a weekly newsletter, we're curating all of this, so we're picking the top news, projects, security releases, so that's maybe an easier entry way if you don't want to get you know as much stuff.

Uh we'll link to that.

That's one option.

Because there is there isn't one.

There isn't one that's not directly related to um Django itself.

And when you know Django itself doesn't really and doesn't really pick favorites and it shouldn't.

Um so this is a more curated take.

Yes, with Jeff Triplett.

Um he's kind of a big deal, uh, he knows the stuff.

Um, so uh I mean he he's probably doing more more on it than I am, to be honest.

So but we're doing that uh and it's it's a lot of fun.

And um so check that out.

There's also, of course, Twitter.

So there's a Django project Twitter feed.

Um that's not used all that often, um, but you should definitely subscribe.

I mean what else?

There's I mean there's a whole I've got a whole uh a list of external resources on my uh awesome Django repo.

There's a bunch of sites that I you know personally think are good.

Um but probably the community blog post that you mentioned is that's probably like the top, you know, external focus I would place for people, I would say.

And then the other issues, um, like so Django packages, which has been around forever, is still a useful resource for finding third-party packages, right?

And so you you you want something I don't know that handles rich text widgets in the admin.

Well, you know, go and type that into Django packages, you'll find the packages that exist and you've the options that are there, and you can kind of see how many GitHub stars they've got and when they were last updated, and those kind of interesting stats which help you choose your packages.

So that's useful.

It's called Django snippets.

And it's got this it's like um it's like gist or whatever, but it's like code snippets, but they're all Django related.

And so uh actually an hour spent browsing that, you're like, oh, that's clever.

Ooh, that's clever.

I think that the the the layout, the UI is is not updated, but yeah, content maybe is still pretty solid.

So here but here's the issue we have, right?

So the Django project has what?

It has uh the Django project um to maintain the Django Django, Django software.

It it has the Django project website, it has the docs that need maintaining and thing, it's got Django packages, it's got Django snippets, it's got you know 40, 50, 60, 70, 80,000 users in just in you know your country alone, and yet very few contributors.

And do you know what?

Django snippets could be a much better site if we had you know more people coming along and say, hey, I'd I I'm happy to give it a little bit of time.

I'm happy to give it a little bit of time, I'm happy to give it a little time.

Uh it's it's a question of surface area and then human power to maintain these things.

That's actually something I want to work on this year.

It is still um, it could be easier to contribute, but it is not super hard.

Um and that's definitely the goal is to you know, instead of sitting there saying, like, what can Django do for me, think what can I do for Django?

Right?

Like if you have a nice thing you've figured out, add it.

If you have a thought, like write a blog post.

Um I th I think especially if you're early in your career, those are really interesting blog posts to read.

I mean, the best questions I get are from total beginners who ask me, you know, sometimes uh you know, out of left field questions that um can often be really deep and make me rethink um things that I take for granted.

So right, right, right, right where you're doing.

So it's you sit there and you if if you even if you're in an office in a team, it's still like kind of quite an isolating experience.

And you might be the back-end person and the front-end person you were, you can talk to them at lunchtime, but you don't really, you can't really communicate about the ins and outs of the ORM with them.

Whereas if you write a blog post about your difficulty ORM and you post that on Twitter, all of a sudden you'll get some responses and you'll have a conversation, and you'll find a couple of people who are into Django that you can follow and they'll follow you back, and then all of a sudden it's like, ah, I'm part of the community.

And if you're applying for a Django job and you've written some posts about Django, again, it doesn't matter what level you're at, just the fact that you're writing about it, they're having these conversations, and you will, you know, it's not a big community of Django experts out there, and they are extremely helpful.

They will they will help you, right?

You know, they'll probably see it one way or another and jump in.

You know, I had that with um when I was starting out.

So um so make the effort to reach out to try to contribute to Django, and then you will, you know, it's a better way to interact with the community rather than just consuming.

It wasn't, you know, it wasn't a good thing.

I mean, that should jump you top to the queue for for any job.

Django or something else related, right?

I mean, I just saw a prominent Django person is head of engineering at a new startup that's using Ruby on Rails.

And you know, it doesn't really matter because he knows how to code, he's really involved with Django.

I'm sure he he probably knows Rails, he can certainly pick it up.

But the skills that you learn being involved in a community and a framework directly apply across.

Like people don't um once upon a time it was uh oh, I see who's he, and it was always he.

He is smart and gets things done, and that was the hiring criteria, right?

And these days it's not like that, it's much more about are you able to work in the team, are you able to communicate, are you able to, you know, do all these what we historically have thought of as softer skills, and blog blog posting, contributing, you know, partaking in the community actually demonstrates that to an employer or a prospective employer.

We've forgotten one thing though, Will.

Like we've mentioned the forum, we've mentioned the um conference videos, we've we didn't mention the conferences, like

oh yeah.

What's the best resource in the Jang community?

It's DjangoCon, Django Europe, DjangoCon America, if you can get there.

It's like go.

Three days of just amazing, amazing talks, amazing community, a couple of days of sprints where you can get involved, you can you know learn how the open source project works.

That's a real resource.

Um come meet us.

So I'll we'll both be at DjangoCon Europe.

Um we'll both be at DjangoCon US.

There's a DjangoCon Africa this year.

I'm not gonna be able to make it, but I hope definitely to make a future one.

And yeah, PyCon, there's a again, there's a list on awesome, awesome Django repo.

But that yeah, that's that's the best way.

Because again, it it is it is sort of isolating, right?

Like we all, even the most introverted person, it's nice to have a community, and again, it's it's so welcoming.

So um, especially these in-person things, or actually, there's probably there might be a uh Django meetup in your area.

So I'm in Boston, there's a regular monthly meetup.

I I go there, meet people.

Um, yeah, you know, it's on Thursday nights, so I I do think like, do I really want to go out on a Thursday night?

But every time I do, I'm glad I did.

You know, so make the effort.

I'll apply that advice to myself too.

Anything else?

Is that it?

That's the top ones.

Like um, you know, the the packages are sort of an amazing resource, but the Django packages to help find them, the blog posts, yeah.

Like I know, yeah, those.

Don't just um like find a way to to give back, even if it's just sharing your experience as a beginner.

Like for example, and I'll give it like an example.

So for me, like I've I love getting emails from people.

I get a lot of emails.

Sometimes people say, you know, will you mentor me?

And I want to put a spin on that of will you mentor me, or when you ask someone for advice, they will just do it out of goodness for a little bit.

But like a mentorship or all these things, it needs to go both ways, right?

There needs to be something that both sides are getting.

So if you are contributing to Django and helping and being engaged, it makes it I don't know, more I don't know.

Maybe I don't want to include this part.

I'm trying to say like be like don't just be a taker.

But maybe I don't know.

I mean, I've one of my goals for 2020 is to think about something around the mentoring realm.

But I don't want to just mentor someone directly because every time I've been in that situation, it's like it's like, well, what do you want?

You just want me to teach you?

No, I don't want to teach you.

Like, there's lots of things, but I'm I'm having to talk to you and say, look, there's the there's the guide over there, but you have to go and read the guide yourself.

Like, I can't read it for you.

I'm not gonna read it.

And I think it's also the case that, again, as with all these experts on the Jenko Forum and all these other places, you know, what I usually say is if someone asks me, I say, well, ask me the question, if I can answer it quickly, um, and it informs my understanding as a teacher, I will answer it.

And if I can't, I won't.

But it's it's sort of like uh, you know, if if people ask for like an hourly rate or this and that, you know, you probably can't pay me what my time is actually worth if it's just me giving it to you, even though I enjoy doing that.

So like tee it up in a way that I can use that to inform my teaching.

We can talk about in the podcast, you know, just be part of the community, and then it's a totally different ball game rather than just I don't know, a more direct one-to-one where you know software developers' time is valuable.

So try to view it, I guess I'm just trying to say understand it from the perspective of Carlton and me and others if we want to help, but try not to make it just an ask.

Try to be involved in the community one way or another.

Um, it'll be better for you and it's better for us, and it's more rewarding all around.

But uh I well anyway, yeah.

We're commit commitment phobic.

I don't know.

So okay, that's resources.

Uh let us know on Twitter or elsewhere if we've missed some, but those are the ones that come to mind for us, anyways.

Thank you.

Okay, bye.