It's kinda hard to understand what this book is supposed to achieve. I mostly bought it because there were no other books about Django available at the time and I wanted something that went beyond the online Django doc. I did not read the TG parts much, because I wasn't really interested, having tried TG before. The little I read didn't look much better than the Django half though.
Short and sweet is that it did not significantly improve my knowledge of Django. All the examples are pretty much surface-level, intro-to-simple-concepts stuff. Or fluffy examples like RSS feeds without exploring the basics in depth first. Not very insightful, but wordy nevertheless. Could I have used this to get started with Django? I could, but the online doc is way more comprehensive and a quicker read. Part of the problem is that Django and Turbogears get only 100 pages each. While 100 more pages cover a more generic discussion of Python-on-the-web coupled with some Django + TG.
Was the bar too high? Did I have a very deep knowledge of web development and Django? No, I did the online tutorial and have spent maybe a month or two coding on Django full time, with little web development background going in. I do know databases and Python very well. This book, which I had no trouble following, just didn't add much to my understanding. Not to say it is entirely without value, hence the 2 stars.
If it's not a good guide to Django, how about allowing someone, perhaps a manager, to decide between Django and TurboGears? Nope, because the authors do not really compare them. Odd, given the format of the book.
I can understand the authors not wanting to pick sides. However I did expect some comparison. What is Django good at? What is TurboGears good at? Possible comparison points: OS support, hosting availability, general maturity & stability, scalability & performance, deployment strategies (Apache, Lightty...), database support, how to extend with custom code + ORMs, Javascript libraries, depth of online docs and online community, etc... No, nothing of the sort. If anything, the "non-trivial" examples are carefully chosen _not_ to do the same things in both frameworks so that you can't compare for yourself.
Surely TG and Django are not equal and both have advantages and disadvantages? This book wasn't even able to answer that question. In the time you spend reading it you could do both the TG and Django tutorials and start answering it for yourself. Past that point, buy a book about only Django or only TG.
