Posts on Ahmad Muhammad

Adding a contact form to a Django site

Thu, 11 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

So, you’ve got a site set up with Django and you’ve got everything running. One small problem: There’s no way for users to contact you. Having this functionality is essential because sometimes users may have some questions about your site and/or any services you’re offering.

Django doesn’t come with built-in contact forms, however creating your own contact form is relatively easy. Let’s see how.

I’m not going to go too in-depth into creating a new Django project, since this article assumes you’ve already got a site up and running. However, I will quickly run through the steps again for the beginners.

To comment or to not comment?

Mon, 18 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

If you’re a newbie in the world of programming, you may have heard of comments. Most tutorials aimed towards beginners mention comments, but it can be confusing to figure out exactly where to use them.

What are comments? Link to heading

Comments are little snippets of information that the programmer can add to their code. Comments are used to make the code easier for humans to understand and are essential when working in teams where there are multiple people working on the same piece of code. Every programming language has a syntax for adding comments, and any text that goes inside of the comment is ignored by the compiler, allowing you to write whatever you want without breaking your code.

Revisiting Django and Flask

Sat, 05 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A little over two and a half years ago, I decided to dabble in the world of Python web-apps by following the book “Django By Example”. Having done Python courses before, I knew my basic way around the language but I had never put together a proper application in any way, shape or form.

Starting Django from the book was a leap for me. I had heard of Django before, I knew it was a framework that let you make web-apps, but I had no idea how any of it worked. My lack of experience with proper Python apps didn’t help my position either. For a large chunk of the project, I was just following the book and not quite understanding what was happening.

Could the Boeing 777X be the death of the Airbus A380?

Mon, 01 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Background Link to heading

Boeing and Airbus have been competing each other in the commercial aviation space since the 1980s. In fact, they are the only commercial aircraft manufacturers out there today.

The two companies may produce similar aircraft, but their philosophies couldn’t be any more different.

Airbus still believes in pushing the limits of how big an aircraft can be. The Airbus A380 “superjumbo” is proof of that. It is the largest passenger aircraft out there.

My journey to Linux

Sat, 22 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

For years, I have been a regular Windows us — who am I kidding? Let’s rephrase this as ‘I am a Windows user since birth.’

The first OS I ever used was Windows XP (which, on a side note, is precisely 11 months older than me,) followed by Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10. Needless to say, I have zero experience when it comes to macOS or Linux.

And to be honest, I never had even heard of Linux until 2014, when I was so fed up of Windows 8 that I Googled “free operating system”. The first line in the results was, you guessed it: Linux. I quickly Googled “Linux” and came to the website of TLF (The Linux Foundation). I was so naive back then that I thought that installing Linux was as simple as downloading a .exe and ticking a box that said wipe Windows 8. I never knew about distributions, or drive partitions, file systems, none of that. I never even knew what an ISO file is or how to open it.