Steering our Python courses towards wxPython, SQLite and Django
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2011-01-19 23:44:37 - Graham EllisWith our modular courses that we write ourselves, we've well placed to move forward with technology; more often than not, what's needed is a series of gentle changes, adding in the occasional module for private courses where a particular new subject is needed, with it being introduced into public courses as a brief overview, then more thoroughly once it's of significant interest to a good proportion of our delegates. There are, of course, the occasional seismic changes such as Perl 5 to Perl 6 - but that's a story for another day.
We can't for ever add more material into our courses, so as new subjects nudge in, some others are faded out - at first we'll move from heavier to lighter coverage, and then fade them out further if they're on a subject which "no-one uses any more". But of course people do use old code and have to maintain it, and we have material to hand, going back ten years and more, which we can still present on private courses or cover with public course delegates in the evening after the regular course sections have been covered.
I've just updated the descriptions of our public Python courses to reflect within the description pages some of the steers that we've been giving these courses of late. Our Python courses remain very much programming courses, but one of the most significant elements of programming these days in a language like Python is using it to glue together other code, data and applications. So you'll find that we're now shouting much more loudly about:
SQLite - the database engine that's been built into Python since release 2.5, and provides a very much thinner data management architecture than a traditional database server such as Oracle or MySQL
wxPython - the graphic user interface that runs well, cross-platform, and now prevails over the numerous alternatives
Django - the web Framework that's the main reason that some people are using Python in the first place ... and that's becoming a more significant proportion of people.
Our Python courses aren't web database courses based on SQLite, web design courses based on Django, or GUI courses based on wx - they're still Python courses. But you'll learn how Python works with the most prevalent database, the most prevalent framework, and the most prevalent GUI, and have an overview of the GUI, the database and the framework too.
New to programming? See Learning to program in Python
Experienced programmer, learning Python as a new language? See Python Programming