Introducing the Pyramid Quick Tutorial
Last month we unveiled the Quick Tour of Pyramid, a high-level presentation of the basic features in Pyramid. The tour got positive feedback and has been updated and refined as work on Pyramid 1.5 progresses.
We now have something to accompany the Quick Tour: the Pyramid Quick Tutorial. 21 steps through the basic features, with working code, analysis, and linking to reference material. The tutorial is the result of a serious, sustained effort including several for-fee engagements, resulting in an open-content, commercial-quality tutorial that is part of the core Pyramid docs.
We're quite happy to have this available for evaluators and new developers. Over time, we'd like Pyramid to be a fantastic starting point for new Python web developers, with lots of evaluator-friendly resources.
Here's a bit of a look inside.
How It's Made
A couple of years ago I taught a Pyramid tutorial, for-fee, at a Plone Conference. I chose a different approach to tutorials: break the work into independent sections, one concept per section, and make it so even a room full of students would be successful doing it themselves. That formula has been tweaked quite a bit. Here's how the Pyramid Quick Tutorial is produced.
Each of these section is done as Sphinx documents with a common structure:
- Explain the background and give the objectives of that section
- Provide a series of steps to produce a working example in that topic
- The steps link to a subdirectory with a working Python package and link in the code
- Following the steps, some analysis of what was done
- For people that finish faster than others, some extra credit questions
- Lots of deeper linking to the official docs
I then let them go off and do the work for the step, then we reconvene and talk about it. Some students cut-and-paste, some type it all. If they get too far behind, they can just get the package from GitHub and teleport themselves into the present. All the material is available online in the official Pyramid docs, so they can come back later and freshen up.
The sections also have a modest amount of test code, to make sure what is being taught continues to work in the future.
Have tutorial, will travel
Have an in-house team of developers interested in Python 3 for web development? Running a conference with tutorials and up for a high-quality, open-content half/full/two-day tutorial? I know somebody that might be interested. [wink]
Lately I've given my Python 3 Web Development With Pyramid tutorial in some cool venues (Cambridge UK, Brasilia) and now this material is a part of the core Pyramid docs. Still, for each venue, I produce some new sections relevant to the particular needs of that organization or context.
I'm hoping to do more events and more material (next up: a traversal tutorial and an add-on development tutorial for more advanced usage.) Give me a shout, @paulweveritt on Twitter.
posted: 2013-10-08 18:57 by Paul Everitt | permalink