I don’t know much ’bout programmin’ ‘n stuff, but I do know that I’m really liking “Django”:http://djangoproject.com.

It’s made it easy to iteratively work out a data model for a web application I’m thinking about. Along the way, its given me, for next to no effort, the administrative screens to adding, updating and deleting data. I don’t have any templates to display the data yet, but that looks pretty easy to do too.

We’ll see how it goes, but so far it’s helping me over many of the hurdles that have always stymied my teach-myself-to-code projects:
# Easy to see results: Attempts to do things with Servlets/JSP never went far because it always took me too long to get anything more substantial than “Hello World” to work and other obligations and interests would end up winning out. I tried using frameworks to jump start my efforts, but they were too opaque for my little brain.
# Sense of time well spent: I’ve considered doing things in PHP figuring it would be easy to get something up and running quickly, but part of my mind always resists because of this sense that PHP is going cultivate bad habits on my part. Right or wrong, I have sense that Python encourages good habits. Plus, I feel like the Django examples, by virtue of linuistic pedigree, are good examples to follow.
# The django samples, including the code that runs their site, are relatively easy for me to understand as well. As a result I don’t feel like I’m blundering into the briars, or digging myself a deep hole like I often do when I’m trying to fix bugs or hack new functionality into a C# web application I have to deal with.

Basically, with Django, so far, I feel like the chances I’m taking are well hedged, and as I take them, I find I’m being rewarded at every step. Django is good because it makes me feel good.

We’ll see if the romance holds up as I get in deeper.