Your Django Story: Meet Alja Isaković
This is a post in our Your Django Story series where we highlight awesome ladies who work with Django. Read more about it here.
Alja is a geek, writer, Outreach at CubeSensors, Rails/Django Girls organizer, CodeCat, and co-founder of Europe Code Week. She’s trying to get more people, especially women, excited about technology.
Photo by: Hana Jošić
How did your story with code start?
Well, my first encounter with coding happened at a very young age, at a Logo workshop. After that, I occasionally meddled with coding, but it wasn’t until a few years ago when I took a couple of Udacity Python courses, started organizing Rails Girls workshops (Django Girls wasn’t around yet) and then co-founded CodeCatz, a coding study group for women, that I started tinkering with code on a more regular basis.
What did you do before becoming a programmer?
I’ve actually never been a programmer. My work varies a lot, but it’s always been related to tech in some way or another. From being a tech blogger to currently doing Outreach at CubeSensors, a hardware startup, where I get to do a lot of fun things. Being familiar with coding certainly helps in such a small team.
What do you love the most about coding?
The moment when whatever you’re coding starts working :) I enjoy the challenge of building something on your own. It feels a bit like doing magic when you can tell computers what to do with just a few lines of code.
Why Django?
Python was the first programming language I got comfortable with, plus there’s a pretty strong Python/Django developer community in Slovenia. So choosing Django for the work we do at CodeCatz made a lot of sense.
What cool projects are you working on at the moment/planning on working on in the near future?
Together with the other, more experienced Catz, I’m hoping to learn some other web frameworks and create an app that would be used at the upcoming WebCamp.si in Spring.
What are you the most proud of?
Definitely our work with CodeCatz! We had quite a year (http://visual.ly/codecatz-year-review-2014), and we’re especially proud of the work we’ve done to support Europe Code Week. I also found some awesome friends in the group.
What are you curious about?
I enjoy learning new things, so I try to be curious about all sorts of random topics I don’t yet know anything about. Working in tech, it’s easy to get caught up in a bubble, so I enjoy meeting people outside “our world” and hearing their stories.
What do you like doing in your free time? What’s your hobby?
Programming is actually a hobby for me right now. And I also enjoy running.
Do you have any advice/tips for programming beginners?
Be curious, and don’t get discouraged if you don’t understand most of what you’re doing at the beginning. And while tutorials are a great way to start learning, don’t get stuck there. Start a project you care about as soon as possible. It’s easier to learn when you’re faced with a practical problem you’re very personally motivated to solve!
Thanks Alja! :)
Anna Ossowski
@OssAnna16Your Django Story: Meet Eleni Lixourioti
This is a post in our Your Django Story series where we highlight awesome ladies who work with Django. Read more about it here.
Eleni is originally from Athens, Greece but she also lived and worked in France and the UK. Currently Eleni lives in London with 2 cats and 2 terrapins, working as a backend python developer with an amazing team at Tictrac (www.tictrac.com). You can read her occasional tweets at @rhapsody88 or follow her on github (https://github.com/Geekfish).
How did your story with code start?
I had my own computer since pretty early in life (by around 7) although my parents only used computers for text processing.
I started coding at around 13 when I accidentally discovered QBasic and little by little, reading the examples, I managed to start making some simple text-based applications/games. After that I moved on to .NET for a while, but it was a while until I finally got into web programming, since we didn’t get internet access until the mid 00s.
In my first year in uni I got acquainted with a couple of amazing web developers who were working on a few interesting projects - I got invited to work with them and they provided me with truly invaluable experience and mentorship. At that point I knew programming was something I really enjoyed doing, so I just kept going :)
What did you do before becoming a programmer?
I spent a few months in law school and I also studied applied foreign languages and translation for a while before taking the decision to officially go full-time into programming.
What do you love the most about coding?
The thing I actually enjoy the most is the constant learning process that it involves: finding better ways to do things, solving new problems, trying out new technologies, reading about peoples’ ideas and solutions and listening to insightful talks. Knowledge sharing is really celebrated in the software community. One of the trickiest and most interesting part in being developer is teaching yourself how to learn new skills and ask good questions as well as handle information sources.
Why Django?
Django is a great web framework. It’s easy to pick up, it can accommodate from the simplest project to applications of very large scale if you decide to build on it. Its toolset really does help you get things done. Also, python is a great language to work with! Both the Django and python communities have great people and can provide lots of resources to people who can to use them.
What cool projects are you working on at the moment/planning on working on in the near future?
I’m trying to learn some games development using Unity and maybe join the next Ludum Dare (http://ludumdare.com/compo/) I’m doing small open source contributions here and there, and I use django to volunteer for a local refugee charity (http://www.afril.org.uk/). Finally preparing a couple of dev talks from my experience working at Tictrac (https://www.tictrac.com/).
What are you the most proud of?
Landing my first programming job and deciding to go coding full time.
What are you curious about?
Functional languages, concurrency problems, personal tracking devices, learning more math.
What do you like doing in your free time? What’s your hobby?
I’m doing a lot of rock climbing, indoors and outdoors. I also greatly enjoy travelling, playing video games, reading books and playing with my cats.
Do you have any advice/tips for programming beginners?
* Get out of your safe zone: try to build things that you don’t know how to build yet, actively engage with people and communities that can help you.
* Software development is about a lot more than technical skills and code.
* Don’t let the “Impostor Syndrome” get to you: don’t underestimate your potential and your current achievements, aim for what you really want to be.
* Django is great, but don’t stop at a single language and a single web framework, there’s a big world of different technologies out there to discover!p
Thanks Eleni! :)
Annabell Ossowski
@OssAnna16Your Django Story: Meet Carol Willing
This is a post in our Your Django Story series where we highlight awesome ladies who work with Django. Read more about it here.
Carol can frequently be heard saying “That’s so cool. How does it work? I would love to learn more about it.” She has enjoyed developing software and electronics and teaching others for over 20 years.
Growing up on the east coast, she was inspired by nature, the arts, and math. Wanting to learn more about those interests, she earned a BSE in Electrical Engineering from Duke University and an MS in Management from MIT. Her education and work experience in small and large companies taught her to respect the value of “using what you have learned to make something better and sharing what you know with others”.
Carol is currently an active contributor to open source projects, like OpenHatch, a co-organizer of PyLadies San Diego, and an independent developer of hardware and software. Weaving her love of art, music, and nature with Arduino based wearable soft circuits, she is developing an open hardware project to assist an in-home caregiver with gentle, compassionate support of a loved one with Alzheimer’s.
Today, she spends much of her time learning and inspiring others to blend their unique interests and technology to create something new, silly, beautiful, or helpful.
How did your story with code start?
The simplified answer would be I started coding back in 1977 in 6th grade during an informal outreach program at Bell Labs learning about mainframes and science research.
Though the more honest answer, I got into programming a year later in 1978 when my middle school received an Apple II computer. At the time, I was a 7th grader that loved math, playing sports, and going to school dances. I was also very self conscious about fitting in socially and tried to minimize how much I loved math.
My school had something called “Project Venture”, a special program for “gifted and talented” students ,where I spent part of the school day with 3 or 4 other students. My 6th grade year in “Project Venture” didn’t go smoothly. I felt like I was being punished for being good at math and separated from my friends.
Yet, 7th grade brought a new eager teacher for “Project Venture”. On the first day of class, I arrived late to class. In the room there were three boys playing Dungeons and Dragons. My teacher enthusiastically welcomed me and asked “Would you like to play?” No. “What would you like to do?” ‘Go back to my friends in the normal class.’
After it was clear that I would be in “Project Venture” whether I wanted to be there or not, I was told to choose two things to work on for the next month. `Would it be ok if I tried to use the Apple? Set it up. Learn how it works. Maybe write a program.’ For two years, I used that Apple computer and loved exploring how it worked and what I could make while using it.
What did you do before becoming a programmer?
I was a kid when I started programming so I did kid things like sports, Girl Scouts, choir, and reading math books and puzzles for fun.
What do you love the most about coding?
One thing that I love is the joy of exploration that comes with coding. When reading source code, I like trying to find my way through the thought process and layers of function calls to understand what is going on. I feel a bit like an archeologist or a detective gathering clues. It’s a puzzle lover’s dream.
Yet, what I love most is the creativity that goes into coding. Looking at a problem in different ways, working with diverse ideas and people to pull together something better than just my individual idea, and seeing the myriad of ways that the code is put to use are things that bring creativity to coding. At the end of the day, coding is something I enjoy and I love sharing it with others that are interested.
Why Django?
Simply, Django is the web framework used by the OpenHatch project, a project that helps people learn how to contribute to open source. A couple of years ago, I met some really thoughtful and talented people on the project. Liking their community, I wanted to help out so I started writing documentation. Asheesh and others were great mentors and helped me learn about the code base’s history.
Around the same time, I joined the San Diego PyLadies group and the San Diego Python User Group. They were doing a Test Driven Development workshop with Django. The folks at the workshop were kind and welcoming, and I learned quite a bit of Django informally from them. We have a lot of fun sharing information and ideas.
What cool projects are you working on at the moment/planning on working on in the near future?
Now that Fab Lab San Diego’s location move is complete, I’m looking forward to creating a Gentle Code Garden within the space. Nothing fancy but a place where people, from all walks of life, can gather to share ideas about software development and explore software and programming at their pace in a supportive environment. For the next six months, it will be primarily open hours for outreach and hopefully later in 2015 some community projects where people work as a team on something that interests them and benefits the San Diego community.
Amusingly, I think all of the projects that I contribute are cool. OpenHatch, Python, teaching IPython notebook, PyLadies, San Diego Python User Group, requests, and github3.py are nice communities with good people sharing a common interest in software and how it impacts others.
What are you the most proud of?
In life, I am most proud of my relationship with my immediate family.
As it relates to software, coding, and Django, I am most proud of the small moments when a person realizes that it is possible for them to create something using software. Many of these students have been told in the past that they can’t write software or aren’t good enough. So it’s a powerful moment when the person goes from thinking software is something that they can’t do to embracing that it is possible.
What are you curious about?
How things are made. Whether art or a product or software, I frequently ask others how they did it. It’s really cool to see the different ways people use materials and tools to make things.
What do you like doing in your free time? What’s your hobby?
I love tidepooling and gardening. Music is my hobby. I’m a novice guitar player, and I play with others in a community guitar orchestra. I also love restoring old guitars and other stringed instruments.
Do you have any advice/tips for programming beginners?
Write lots of small 10-20 line programs. Try to make a small contribution to a project that interests you. Share what you know (even if it’s not programming related) with others. Most of all, believe in yourself.
Thanks Carol! :)
Annabell Ossowski
@OssAnna16Your Django Story: Meet Joanna Tustanowska
This is a post in our Your Django Story series where we highlight awesome ladies who work with Django. Read more about it here.
Joanna is a software developer based in Warsaw, Poland. She works at Titanis, a company which creates software assisting in rehabilitation of neurological patients. Currently, she codes in Python and CoffeeScript/JavaScript.
She likes cycling to work, has two cats and sings in more than one choir.
How did your story with code start?
Both of my parents are programmers but that didn’t cause me to show much interest in computers when I was younger. I changed my mind after graduating from high school. Since I was good enough at math to pass entry exams to my University, I made the easiest choice and went to study Computer Science there. From that moment it stopped being that easy… I had a lot of trouble with my studies. It turned out that I need to work a lot and believe in myself even just a little to move forward and I was constantly failing at both. But with time and support from my friends I learned to love studying and working in this field.
What did you do before becoming a programmer?
I was a clueless teenager :)
What do you love the most about coding?
I take part in building usable things, even though they aren’t physical objects. Without any manual/engineering skills, I get to create something. And it works, sometimes :)
Also, thanks to coding I am learning a lot about work ethic, perseverance, pushing my limits, teamwork(!), and many other character building things, unrelated to programming itself.
Why Django?
I love programming in Python and I do some web stuff sometimes. Django is a great web framework which makes many website-related things easy (if not somewhat magical at first). Plus, it has a very well written documentation - it is important to have good docs when you learn a new library.
What cool projects are you working on at the moment/planning on working on in the near future?
At work, I am a part of the team that makes two very interesting projects: http://www.neuro-forma.com/en/ Neuroforma – a computer program designed to support home rehabilitation for people with various neurological disorders, and http://autilius.pl/ - a program directed to children with autism and their therapists. In short, these projects engage users in various physical and cognitive activities by using motion capture and Extended Reality technologies (think Kinect).
After hours I am starting to play with programming for Android. We’ll see what will come out of it.
What are you the most proud of?
That I stuck to programming despite feeling very discouraged in the beginning. Also, I am very glad that I recently attended the Django Girls workshop as a mentor. This teaching experience was very empowering and humbling at the same time and as a bonus, I got to spend a day and a half with some wonderful women.
What are you curious about?
About everything! Especially if it involves some casual clicking through a stream of articles on the Internet :)
What do you like doing in your free time? What’s your hobby?
Right now my main hobby is singing. I spend a good part of my free time on choir rehearsals.
Do you have any advice/tips for programming beginners?
Learn to ask for help! Find some more experienced people or a local community and bug them with questions. Very often the sole act of asking a specific question can guide you to a solution because you start to better understand your problem.
Thanks Joanna! :)
Annabell Ossowski
@OssAnna16Django Girls Tutorial available in Polish and Ukrainian
It’s a great pleasure to announce that over the weekend we deployed a Polish and Ukrainian translation of Django Girls Tutorial!
Since we added Google Analytics to the tutorial on July 28th 2015, tutorial has been visited by more than 17 000 unique users, generating almost 250 000 page views. Tutorial is improving everyday with the help from 57 contributors. It’s always supporting the newest version of Django and working on Python 3. More importantly, the tutorial is widely recommended on the internets.
Thanks to amazing efforts of volunteers, the tutorial is now published in English, Polish and Ukrainian. This will make it even more accessible for non-native English speakers to learn about the beauty of building the internet. We would like to give special thanks to Łukasz Wójcik, chupakabra, Ania Warzecha, CrazyHorse, Kinga Kieczkowska, Maciek Zając and Mariusz Zieliński for translating tutorial to Polish and Ukrainian languages. <3 <3
If you want to help translate tutorial to your own language, you can do it too! We’re currently translating it to Chinese, Italian, Hungarian, Spanish and Portuguese on Crowdin. If your language is not on the list, open up a Github issue and we will make it happen :)
Happy coding in 2015!
Ola Sitarska
@olasitarskaYou are a badass Django Girl!
When I email women and ask them if they would like to do an interview for our Your Django Story series I sometimes get replies like
“I think my story isn’t very interesting.“
"I always liked Math and studied Computer Science, so I really don’t have anything cool to tell you.“
"I don’t think people will want to read my story.“
"I’m not a professional programmer.“
"I don’t work with Django professionally.“
"Do you really think I would qualify to be featured on the blog?“
Reading those replies makes me sad so I wanted to say a few words.
There are really only two requirements you have to meet in order to be a Django Girl:
You have to identify as a woman.
You have to use Django in any way.
That’s it! :)
It doesn’t matter whether you’ve worked with Django professionally for 10 years or whether you just started and are using it for little side projects at home. If you write computer programs, you are a computer programmer. If you are a woman who works with Django, you are a Django Girl!
Your story is more interesting than you think or know!
We get so much great feedback from people telling us that they read every single story we publish and that they enjoy reading them so much. Whether you always liked Math, then studied Computer Science and work as a programmer now or you made a big carreer change, your story is interesting, special and unique and people would love to read it! You never know, maybe your story might change another woman’s life because it inspires her. Don’t be afraid to share your story, you are awesome!
We started the Django Story project in September 2014 and have published 30 awesome stories so far. Let’s make 2015 another great Django Story year but in order to do that we need your help! If you identify as a woman and work with Django or know someone who does please shoot us an email at story@djangogirls.org. We’d love to read your stories. We’d especially love to read more stories of Django Girls alumni. It doesn’t matter whether you started working as a programmer after attending a Django Girls workshop or just work on Django projects at home. Please tell us your story and share what you got out of attending a Django Girls workshop.
You are badass Django Girl!
Here’s to a great Django Girls year 2015!
PS: If you don’t know anything about Django yet but are interested and would love to learn more, please check out our website for new Django Girls events and our tutorial. We have a Gitter chatroom where people would love to help you and you can also email us anytime :)
Anna Ossowski
@OssAnna16Your Django Story: Meet Ana Krivokapić
This is a post in our Your Django Story series where we highlight awesome ladies who work with Django. Read more about it here.
Ana is a Software Engineer at Red Hat, @OpenStack Horizon core contributor, cyclist and speed cuber. She was a coach at the first Django Girls workshop in Berlin. You can follow her on Twitter @infraredgirl.
How did your story with code start?
It is probably the typical story of many geeks. I was fascinated with computers as a child, loved the programming classes in high school and decided to study computer science at the university.
What did you do before becoming a programmer?
My first “real” job, which I got right after finishing the university, was a junior programmer at a local internet service provider. Before that, all I did were small jobs to earn pocket money during my studies - data entry, tutoring maths to high school kids, etc.
What do you love the most about coding?
I’m afraid I don’t have a very original answer to this question, in fact I’d bet it’s probably the most common answer you get: I like the feeling and the sense of accomplishment you get when you manage to make the computer do your bidding. Bonus points if what you made it do is actually useful! ;)
Why Django?
In my first job, I wrote python CGI scripts by hand, with all the boilerplate that comes with that. So imagine my excitement when I came across Django and found out all these problems have already been solved and you can just use the solution for free, instead of re-inventing the wheel every time. So I started looking into Django in my free time, and although I didn’t get to use it at work at the time, I did get that chance at my next job.
What cool projects are you working on at the moment/planning on working on in the near future?
At the moment I am working on a project called Horizon. It is the UI for OpenStack, the free and open source cloud computing platform. I am also working on the TripleO UI, TripleO being the deployment program for OpenStack. Both of these project are written in Django.
What are you the most proud of?
That’s a very difficult question to answer without getting too personal. :) Let’s say, making the right choices at the right moments.
What are you curious about?
Many things. One very interesting current topic is the ways in which technology impacts our lives, especially when it comes to personal freedoms and personal privacy concerns.
What do you like doing in your free time? What’s your hobby?
I like travelling and cycling. Sometimes I combine the two and do long cycling tours. I also like learning foreign languages.
Do you have any advice/tips for programming beginners?
When you get stuck with a problem, step away from the computer, take a break, take a walk. A clear-headed approach does wonders for one’s problem solving skills. I can’t even remember how many times I’ve lost hours sitting stubbornly at the computer, only to arrive at a solution minutes after taking a break.
Thanks Ana! :)
Annabell Ossowski
@OssAnna16Django Girls Winter of Code
For last few months we were thinking about building a “Jobs” section on Django Girls website to help Django Girls alumni find their first developer job and create a place where companies that look for junior Django/Python developers can post information about a position. Unfortunately, with all Django Girls events going on, work and other projects we took part in, we had no time to code it on our own.
That is why we decided to ask if any of Django Girls attendees, coaches or supporters is interested in helping us out and we posted a request on our Django Girls group and Twitter.
We couldn’t believe our eyes! 17 people have volunteered to help with the project. We were overwhelmed by the response!
But we had only one project and asking 17 people (most of them beginners) to work on that would be insane. On the other hand wasting this opportunity would be a shame.
And then we come up with and idea of Django Girls Winter of Code! Every person who volunteered is offered a place in one of four teams. Each team has from 1 to 6 members and at least one mentor.
The idea is pretty simple: building real project in Django and helping the Django Girls community to grow bigger! Each team will meet with their mentor at least once a week via hangout/Skype. Mentors will track their progress, make a code review and help them out with any problems they have.
We are super excited about it! It is one big experiment and we are eager to see what will be an outcome.
First Django Girls Winter of Code will run four projects:
Django Story - which will help Anna Ossowski with her awesome Django Story series of interviews. Anna will implement the project on her own with a little bit of help of her mentor: Baptiste Mispelone.
Jobs - place where we can put job offer for Django Girls and information about meet-ups and conferences that our alumni could be interested in. Maria Lowas, Maria Cywińska, Katarzyna Siedlarek and Mikey Ariel will be responsible for this project. Becky Smith will help them as their mentor.
Teams - the whole goal of this project is to give credit to everyone who helped make Django Girls a reality. It’s not just Ola and Ola but at this point the Django Girls is made by HUNDREDS of people. We believe that giving credit and gratitude to people who spend their free time making the world a better place is extremely important. Kinga Kieczkowska, Renata Jamroń and Alba I.Leon are in charge here. Maciej Gryka will mentor them.
Learning Resources - create a space on Django Girls website for learning resources to learn more about Python, Django, HTML and CSS. The team members for this projects are: Yaleesa Borgman and Paulina Grondal. Maria Niţă will be their mentor.
We believe it will be awesome winter this year! Stay tuned! And keep your fingers crossed for our awesome teams!
Your Django Story: Meet Claire Reynaud
This is a post in our Your Django Story series where we highlight awesome ladies who work with Django. Read more about it here.
Claire is an iOS and Django developer. She works as a freelancer from Saint Etienne, in France. She started to work as a Java developer at Trango, a mobile virtualization company, acquired in 2008 by VMware. After working in VMware’s Horizon mobile team, she joined Epyx in Switzerland, where she discovered iOS and Django. In her free time, Claire likes to climb via ferrata and play board games. You can follow her @ClaireReynaud.
How did your story with code start?
I went to the University in Lyon, France, to study mathematics. If you wanted to study maths there, you had to take computer sciences too, for 2 years. This is how I started to code. Before that I had absolutely no idea what coding was about. I discovered that programming was really fun.
What did you do before becoming a programmer?
I’ve always worked as a programmer. I have been doing this for 10 years now.
What do you love the most about coding?
There are many things that I like about coding. One of the things I love the most is that I learn new stuff all the time.
Why Django?
I learned about Django when I was working in Switzerland for a company that was doing both mobile and web development. First I was doing only mobile development there, but I had the opportunity to start doing some Django too.
I like Django, but I don’t use it on a daily basis for my work as a freelancer. I am mainly doing mobile development for iOS.
What cool projects are you working on at the moment/planning on working on in the near future?
I don’t have any side project right now. I started to work as a freelancer this year and I have been busy shipping apps to showcase what I can do and working on my first customer projects.
At the beginning of this year, I did a Django workshop for DuchessSwiss (a group of women developers from the Java community). They were curious about Python and Django, so I was happy to help :).
What are you the most proud of?
When someone uses software that I built and tells me it made their day.
What are you curious about?
What motivates people to do what they do.
What do you like doing in your free time? What’s your hobby?
I like to climb via ferrata. I also love board games and electric guitars.
Do you have any advice/tips for programming beginners?
Go to dev meetups. Review code and get your code reviewed. If something works but you don’t understand why, take the time to understand. That’s really ok if it takes time. You’ll learn a lot this way.
Thanks Claire! :)
Annabell Ossowski
@OssAnna16Your Django Story: Meet Svetlana Sapelova
This is a post in our Your Django Story series where we highlight awesome ladies who work with Django. Read more about it here.
Svetlana was born in Saint-Petersburg, Russia and graduated from the computer science faculty in her hometown. Within half a year after graduation she moved to Budapest to start working as web developer. Svetlana stayed there for a year and then relocated to Slovenia where she is still living. She works as a front-end developer in a Dutch startup and is an active member of CodeCatz, a great group of people, mostly girls, learning to code together. Svetlana likes to snowboard, learn languages (not only programming ones) and doing yoga.
How did your story with code start?
I graduated from the faculty of computer science in 2010. The reason I got enrolled there is that I always thought in the era of tech progress the world would always need more and more programmers. Besides I wanted to have a job that makes my brain work hard every single day because only then I feel productive.
What did you do before becoming a programmer?
I went to school and played the piano.
What do you love the most about coding?
As I said, it keeps my brain in working mode. Besides it such a dynamic field that I learn something new every day.
Why Django?
It was the choice of CodeCatz (my team that has built http://events.codeweek.eu/). We had one month to build the first version of the page, so we were looking for a framework most of the team had knowledge about. So it was Django. That’s how I started to learn it.
What cool projects are you working on at the moment/planning on working on in the near future?
My first serious Django project is http://events.codeweek.eu/ that me and my friends from CodeCatz (https://twitter.com/CodeCatz) started building together in March 2014. In the beginning we wanted to make a website where people can upload events taking place during CodeEu week. However, it became really popular among organizers of the coding events, and now you can find hundreds of events happening all year round.
What are you the most proud of?
First I am really proud of being part of the great team called CodeCatz. We are mostly girls that learn to code together, meeting on a weekly basis and helping newbies to delve into the world of programming. I am happy to see our work brings results, I like to see girls getting interested in programming, learning, progressing.
Second, I am really proud our first serious project with CodeCatz is successful. It’s a wonderful feeling to see a number of events is rapidly growing. It means we did a great job and it encourages me to continue and proceed to the next challenges.
What are you curious about?
Everything related to web development. I can spend a lot of my free time reading articles and exploring code of open source projects because I am sure one of the keys to quality code is learning from others.
What do you like doing in your free time? What’s your hobby?
My hobby is to learn, as much as possible. Usually I dedicate my free time either to learning something new about web development or to master some foreign language (currently it’s French).
Do you have any advice/tips for programming beginners?
Keep doing it, never give up. Learn as much as possible, talk to programmers, ask them questions, do your own projects.
Thanks Svetlana! :)
