For example, let say I'm working on an ecommerce system and I try to understand what happens when a buyer adds an item to its cart. I'm going to put logs / debugger's prompts on the important steps of that operation. Next to those, add a comment that describes why this step is important. The important thing is to label the comment with incrementing numbers. Those numbers allow me to keep track of the order of execution.
Finally, commit this to a dummy branch and share it with your co-workers if both of you are new to this code base.
That's one of the first thing I do when I jump in a new codebase. Pick something that interests you, and log the whole operation.
I have seen myself iterating a lot more during a session where I would listen to trance music instead of 2000s punk rock.
Is it the smaller amount of lyrics? I don't know, but I'm convinced I have observed a higher productivity when listening to high bpm music in the past 5 years.
If you're familiar with Django, just go for it. The documentation is really nice and it is batteries included: admin panel, authentication, permissions and more. All this free stuff will let you focus on your app instead of what is around it.
For the frontend, it depends on your goals. If you need a quick prototype, just use the Django templating engine and ship something quick. If you want to learn, choose a popular frontend framework and stick to it. They are all pretty good. Check their API / ecosystems and pick the one you like :)
For example, let say I'm working on an ecommerce system and I try to understand what happens when a buyer adds an item to its cart. I'm going to put logs / debugger's prompts on the important steps of that operation. Next to those, add a comment that describes why this step is important. The important thing is to label the comment with incrementing numbers. Those numbers allow me to keep track of the order of execution.
Finally, commit this to a dummy branch and share it with your co-workers if both of you are new to this code base.
That's one of the first thing I do when I jump in a new codebase. Pick something that interests you, and log the whole operation.