This is an alpha of a project I have been working over the weekend. I intend to use it for my own purposes, but I think it can bring some purpose to others:
I suspect there are many other similar projects, even better than this one, that newcomers to Django could use to smoothen their initial experience with Django and addressing some common difficulties.
I think most of the stuff that Django training wheels includes could be incorporated to Django. Of course, I could be mistaken (I have not used these patterns so much that I am certain they improve over core Django) or just arrogant, but I find some common frustrations that could be addressed.
I am also posting this in a kind of Cunningham’s Law purpose; I would be very happy if someone looked at this and pointed me to a project that is doing the same and is farther along the way, so I could contribute to it instead of maintaining my own.
This looks like a fantastic initiative for Django beginners! Getting started with Django can feel overwhelming, so having a structured way to ease into it is a great idea.
Have you considered integrating some beginner-friendly debugging tools or guided walkthroughs for common pain points? Also, would love to hear how this compares to existing starter projects like Cookiecutter Django.
No, not really- I’m in a bit of an early stage for that. Also, I’ve been quite out of the Django loop. Back in the day I used django-debug-toolbar, but never really got a ton of mileage out of it. I wrote most of my code on the REPL so I never had to fiddle too much.
Is there anything good nowadays? Although I don’t really want to add a lot to training wheels, some debugging would fit the theme.
This is more kinda like I had in mind. I already include examples of raw_id_fields and filtering per user in the admin, because I feel it’s something that is too hidden in the docs (even if there’s a FAQ entry about the latter).
Right now I wanted to focus on the admin, because I feel the admin is an excellent way to kickstart projects, figure out the schema and ease newcomers into Django, but if you have any specific pain point in mind, I’m all ears!
I updated a bit the idea on the README. Cookiecutter Django wants to be production ready- training wheels does not. I feel if you are a newcomer to Django, Cookiecutter Django will feel intimidating. But I expect people could move from training wheels to Cookiecutter Django as they want to go into production!
I intentionally never plan to include most of the features in Cookiecutter Django. Although I found it an amazing product and might use it for my personal purposes.