Thanks for the reply! I'd love to go more in-depth with my critique. Keep in mind that, while I'm new to Django and Python, I've worked with PHP, Java, C++, C, and Objective-C for years. I'm familiar with writing reusable code and how to write code that is able to be read by others. I'm also an OOP fanatic, so I'm already on board with most of the conventions that are suggested by most frameworks like Django and Rails. My previous experience with Django was going through the official Django tutorial.

So, while I may be a weird outlier (not a beginner, but I only have a basic understanding of Python), I felt that the book was never really written for me. It lacks an authoritative tone that I want in a "best practices" manual, and the fact that the book spends so much time explaining why best practices are important really made me think that the book was meant for programming beginners. Paradoxically, the book will then randomly drop in a Python package or two without explanation and expect me to know what it is.

Here are some examples:

Using explicit relative imports -- The section explains why explicit relative imports are good. Fair enough. Then, the book provides an example of "bad code" with "implicit relative imports". Keep in mind that you still haven't defined "explicit relative imports." Then, you explain how un-portable and un-reusable these "hard coded" imports are. After that, you convert the snippet to "explicit relative imports". Still no definition. From here, I try to compare the two snippets. Did the authors really spend 2 pages explaining a "best practice" that could easily fixed by just omitting the package name? I honestly thought I was missing something. Then, the fact that "implicit" relative imports had more code than "explicit" relative imports really started messing with my head, so I decided to move on.

Chapter 2
Fixtures -- I wasn't wondering why we weren't using fixtures because I had no idea what they were (they weren't covered in the tutorial). Simply defining fixtures would help here.

The rest of the chapter was all info that applies to every language and isn't specific to Django (dev and prod should be identical, use git, etc.), so I wasn't really getting much out of the chapter.

Chapter 3

Other Alternatives -- why?! I'm trusting you with my life here! Tell me what to do! I am yours to mold into a brilliant Django developer!

Chapter 6

Model managers -- This is where the narrative style really lead to ambiguity for me. Example 6.6 isn't labeled as a BAD EXAMPLE, yet you lead into it with a rhetorical question. My e-reader happened split the page right after the example, so if I had stopped reading there (which is common for me with reference books), I may have not seen that, on the next page, you explain that Example 6.6 is an example of what not to do.

General
My problem getting acclimated to Django isn't the third party libraries necessarily; it's more my lack of knowledge about them at all. Throughout the book, there are tips for libraries to add to Django, but there's hardly ever a thorough explanation or description of the product, just that you think it's important.

Hope that helps! Just in case it needs to be said: none of this is an attack on you at all; I totally appreciate the work that went into this book. Thanks for listening to feedback and let me know if you have any other questions!