Django from first principles

Most Django tutorials begin by telling people to run manage.py startproject, followed by manage.py startapp. While this creates a project structure that's helpful to experienced Django developers, it throws a bunch of unnecessary complexity in front of someone new to building web apps. After running just these two commands, there are about 12 files to make sense of!

In this talk we'll skip the startproject and startapp commands. Instead we'll start with a single file that serves a home page. We'll then build up a simple but non-trivial project, only adding complexity as it's needed. By the time the project is finished, we'll have a structure that's similar to what startproject and startapp generate. But, audience members will understand exactly why every part of the project exists, because it was only created out of necessity.

This talk is not just for beginners. People new to Django will come away with an understanding of why typical Django projects are structured the way they are, and won't have to wonder about the complexity that these two commands generate. People who've had some experience with Django will understand the projects they've already been working with better. People who are quite experienced with Django will hopefully see the framework from a beginner's eyes, in a different way.