I work with a lot of developers both seasoned and green who are new to python.

Here are some foundations that every python developer should have:

• Virtualenv which I believe is a cornerstone of healthy python development.
• pdb: the python debugger which is an incredible tool for debugging even the toughest of applications.
• simple exploration of python with iPython a brief intro to the popular interactive python shell

Python also has some rich third-party libraries. A favorite of mine for parsing HTML content is PyQuery. I’ve written a tutorial to get you started with PyQuery.

If you are getting started with Jinja templates you should learn about macros.