[yen223]

Database requests, ORMs and for loops technically are part of "things which happen between the url and the view" ;). More to the point, they certainly are all equally important, but web requests was slightly more difficult because that wasn't covered in the engineering course.

Whether a top-down approach is better than a bottom-up approach to learning, that's debatable, I'd grant you that. My experience tells me that going top-down is better, because practical high-level skills are more useful than theoretical low-level knowledge. It's the same way knowing how to drive a car is more useful than knowing how an engine works. If the OP decides halfway that web development is not for him, at least he'll still know enough to be able to build a functional webapp, which can be a boon to whatever profession he chooses next.