#pyladies

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I tend to look at questions this way... If I already knew the answer, I wouldn't be asking the question.

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well, there are dumb questions... or at least... lazy questions... "I can't be bothered to do a modicum of research" questions

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pdurbin: true. one of the things that I try to teach my students is how and where to look for information.

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stack overflow is a good place to ask a question if you're already done some homework on it

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pdurbin: I don't really ask any questions without homework first, so when people assume I'm just being lazy, I feel very frustrated.

michelleglauser: understandable

willingc: good thing to teach

I've had people tell me, "The docs are so good," when several complete read-throughs and trials have shown that they're not adequate for my beginner needs.

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I made my first contribution to the docs of python. It took a lot of reading and re-reading the core-dev mentorship guides, reading mailing lists and meeting individuals at Pycon to get the confidence to do a fairly trivial fix.

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there are changes I would like to make to the python docs, but I know they would be met with resistance

The hardest part was just making sense of the issue tracker. Which bugs were old and moldy. And trying to find a way to search easily.

nedbat: that says a lot coming from you. I love your testing stuff.

willingc: were you the one working on Windows docs?

willingc: thanks :)

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pdurbin: No. I just found a small doc change that was pretty well outlined by Terry Reedy. After meeting nick and bitdancer and helping jesstess with the opw questions, I decided to just take the plunge

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willingc: ah. I'm thinking of someone else then

pdurbin: I think you were thinking of katweaver who worked on some docs for windows

I have ideas of what I would love to change about parts of the Django docs and the Django polls tutorial, but I don't think I've figured that stuff out enough to do it yet.

willingc: gotcha. thanks

michelleglauser: you might find this interesting on django http://test-driven-django-development.readthedo...

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It's been a collaborative effort here in SD. We've done two workshops with about 40-50 attendees each time and one can go through it alone or in a group.

at the workshops, we had 6 or so people at each table. Everyone worked at their own pace. It was well received.

willingc: nice, thanks!

feel free to ask any questions that might come up on IRC #sandiegopython

we're a small but friendly group :)

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Thanks all for the insights and conversation. I must be afk to feed my family sunday dinner :)

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Have a great night.

michelleglauser: what 'stuff' do you need to figure out to be able to contribute to the Django docs?

Mostly database stuff. I am really struggling with this right now. I switched to PostgreSQL because I was told that SQLite wouldn't work with Heroku, but everything got so messed up that I had to revert to old code with SQLite. Now I'm trying again and all I can do is shake my head. "Can you guide me through this process?" isn't really a question, and usually no one likes to volunteer to help when I say things like that. I'm not sure what else

to do when I've tried a zillion things, keep running into errors that Google hasn't been able to help me with, and get completely stuck. I guess I could post the entire process, but in the end I'd still need more than just one answer.

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have you asked heroku support?

I asked on their IRC channel. Crickets.

I once told Kenneth Reitz, who actually wrote much of the Python Heroku stuff, that the docs weren't very good for Django, and he seemed surprised.

I run into sentences all the time like, "Make sure that your ______ is set up and then do this." Unfortunately, I don't know how to make sure whatever is set up. Specific instructions for everything would be great. Or sometimes there are directions to include certain code, but it doesn't say where. Another problem I run into often is not knowing which part of code I need to customize for my situation.

'crickets' ? (what does htat mean?)

selene: sorry. It just means there was no response.

oh, ok

I'd try their support online - so that they would have your account details to look at how you are doing it

maybe raise a support ticket?

selene: good point.

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From what I've seen of the django community, I think they would appreciate contributions to the docs from a beginners viewpoint - even just to highlight areas htat are not clear enough

tuningmind: if there are people there who know how to do it, it would be strange to me if they didn't provide some guidance to get michelleglauser over hurdles. Is it for work?

selene: I'm sure they would. But usually where there's a gap, I don't know how to fill it in. I guess I could open an issue, or suggest to someone to work on that part, or even try to figure it out and then edit it myself, though at this point I just need to get this project done.

selene: yes, it's a short-term, intense-deadline project that is clearly above my skill level as the only engineer. I convinced myself to take it to learn, but I've learned that Google isn't enough. I need people to learn from.

that's understandable. I wanted to make sure nothing other than time was blocking you from feeling able to contribute :)

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time gap - I was replying to hte previous message about not having time to contribute to django docs

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not hte deadline one

michelleglauser: especially if it is for work, I'd be raising issues with heroku and trying to get htem to help me

selene: at this point, it's installation problems and high-level questions about databases, so there's not much I can ask Heroku. The last time I tried it I got far enough that I should have asked Heroku. I hope I can get that far again.

Wouldn't the installation problems be something Heroku would help with? (if it is on heroku).

selene: sorry not to be clear. It's installing the dependencies needed to create the PostgreSQL database on my own laptop that is holding me up.

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tuningmind: ha, proof that what I said earlier really is true—I already have postgresql channel open and a question half-typed out, but I'm scared to post it. Maybe I'm not being specific enough, maybe no one will answer and I'll feel dumb. Maybe someone will answer and I'll have no idea what they're talking about.

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tuningmind: now that I've outed my hesitation, I'll give it a shot here. :D

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michelleglauser: I often can't understand peoples answers, have to ask them to clarify.

Gah, and even now I'm hesitating because I don't know if I've exhausted everything or if what I'm asking even makes sense.

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michelleglauser: +1

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I'm following these instructions: http://killtheyak.com/use-postgresql-with-djang... When I run "$ sudo -u postgres createuser -s $USER", I am getting "sudo: unknown user: postgres". It seems like that means postgresql isn't installed, but when I try to install, I get an error saying that it's already installed. So I think I need to specify where it is on my path (is that right?), but I'm not sure where/how to find it.

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Mac OS X

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I thought I was creating a user with that command.

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I tried _postgres with that same command and got a huge error.

could not identify current directory: Permission denied

createuser: could not connect to database postgres: could not connect to server: No such file or directory

Is the server running locally and accepting

connections on Unix domain socket "/tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432"?

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Not familiar at all.

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Hmm, I didn't know I had to get it running first.

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Hmm, okay. So I should do initdb? If it's for a specific project, should I specify the /usr/local/var/postgres path or something else?

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tuningmind: feel free to say that to me every few minutes. ;)

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:)

michelleglauser: i ran into that just the other day! unfortunately i already can't remember what i did to get psql running

How weird that the link I posted says to create the user and then create the db. I'll try the initdb thing.

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Aaaaand it says that that directory exists but is not empty, so I'll either have to remove or empty it to create a new database system.

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tuningmind: that's a good tip for building resilience. Instead of thinking, "Oh no, another roadblock," I need to think, "progress!" like you.

michelleglauser: which step are you on on this http://killtheyak.com/use-postgresql-with-djang...