After reading these comments I've realized that trying to "go it alone" in Python is biting off too much at once. It will be too long before I can finish anything usable, and I'll lose motivation.
So, I've decided to aim for "FAST" and use Django to get a working website out the door as soon as possible, and study programming at greater depth on the side (without expecting that effort to pay for itself immediately).
I started going through the book "Practical Django Projects" this evening and it feels right at my level.
Thanks for all your perspectives! I appreciate it a lot.
Building stuff is really the only way I've ever learned anything about programming. Sure, reading a good book on the topic is helpful, but until you've built a few things using it, you don't understand the language|framework|technique.
One thing you should try is WSGI after you're done with the blog. WSGI is a Python-level specification for how to interoperate with a Web server.
It's a layer above FastCGI (if you know what that is) and takes care of all the OS-level things such as network programming (but that is very good to know about).
One thing you'd really want to learn right now is HTTP. It is essential to Web development or design.
So, I've decided to aim for "FAST" and use Django to get a working website out the door as soon as possible, and study programming at greater depth on the side (without expecting that effort to pay for itself immediately).
I started going through the book "Practical Django Projects" this evening and it feels right at my level.
Thanks for all your perspectives! I appreciate it a lot.