By : Shabda Raaj

Two scoops of Django is the new book on Django best practices by Daniel Greenfeld and Audrey Roy. I just finished reading it and found it extremely useful.

The book is a collection of tips, their justification and code organized in logical areas. I have been using Django since 2008, but I still found a few tips which were new to me and many which served as good reminder. At about 200 pages, its comprehensive but not overwhelming. If you are an advanced Djangonaut, you can read it in a weekend (And you probably are using all its recommendations anyway ...

By : Shabda Raaj

Pragmatic Guide to JavaScript is the Pragprog's book by Christophe Porteneuve which I have wanted to read for a while.

I went into this book expecting to read actionable and task focussed book on modern JavaScript, and this book does not disappoint on that count. Using 35 tasks which you are going to need in your browser based JS development, this books teaches required JS techniques.

However I went into the book expecting a framework agnostic approach. This book however is very heavily focussed on Pototype. Initial chapters start as framework agnostic, but they soon turn into Prototype based ...

By : Shabda Raaj

The Principles of Successful Freelancing is book I read after The Principles of Project Management.

My motivation from this book was to use freelancing advice and use that for our (larger) business. This book is razor focussed on Freelancing and even more on people who are starting with or considering starting freelancing. If you are in this group I consider this book very well written, and a must read, but if you are part of a larger group, the razor sharp focus makes this not worthwhile.

Chapter wise it is:

1. Chapter 1: Considering Freelancing?
2. Chapter 2: Prepare for the Transition ...

By : Shabda Raaj

The Principles of Project Management is the book I am reading after Outsourcing Web Projects.

I went into this book expecting lot of actionable steps I can use for our projects right away, however this book is heavier on theory. Guess I can not complain with the name being The Principles of Project Management.

In their own words the book has,

So What Is Project Management Anyway?

This chapter forms an introduction to the art and science of project management. Here, we talk about the key phases every project goes through and why project management skills are increasingly important today ...

By : Shabda Raaj

Sitepoint had a book sales running recently where they made all their books available for sale at 7$. Being a sucker for good books and deals, I bought more than I should have. Here is the review of the first I read, "Outsourcing web projects."

This books is written from the viewpoint of buyers, but as a vendor, I have some insights (IMO) from the other side.

It starts with these chapters.

• How to Have Vendors Competing for your Job.
• How to Find the Perfect Outsourcing Partner.
• How to Get the Best Price for your Project.
• How to Get it ...

By : Shabda Raaj

This is announcement about our new work, Django Gotchas, a teeny tiny ebook about commonly occurring gotchas with Django. Here is the readme copied from the project.

Django-gotchas is a collections of gotchas which happen commonly when you are working with Django. They are some errors which I have made commonly or seen others do, these are not the errors which happen because they are hard to reason about, these are those errors which hapen when you close your eyes for a moment when coding.

This is still very much a work in progress, released in the spirit of release ...

By : Shabda Raaj

This is announcement about our new work, Django design patterns, a ebook about, well, Django design patterns. (Well imagine that!). Here is the readme copied from there.

[Edit] Syntax highlighting and indentation preservation were totally brroken. Fixed now.

Django design patterns is a book about commonly occuring patterns in Django. Not patterns in Gof sense, but patterns in the sense, we work this way, and it works for us. For us it is a ~pattern of work~ sense.

At this point this is just a lot of brain dump from us.

The latest sources are always available from http://github ...