Django is a reasonable enough one to learn. He hasn't the skills to examine the possible contenders and make a good decision himself. After learning Django, then he may be in a position to better appraise the competition.

Likewise, I didn't say "read a book on Unix" but gave a specific, worthy, contender. As a complete newcomer there's little more annoying than general hand-waving.

Hm, I guess that's fair enough. My main concern is that if he starts with Django, he might never know there's other frameworks.

If he starts with Python, he may not know there's other languages. If he... If he starts with digital computers, he may not know there's analogue ones. :-)

Yes, yes.. But I hang out in #python.web on freenode, and you'd be surprised how many people I get who think that Django, or mod_python, or CGI is the only way to make Python webapps. Not the best way; the only way.