Your Django Story: Meet Teresa de la Torre

This is a post in our Your Django Story series where we highlight awesome ladies who work with Django. Read more about it here.

Teresa is a Python and Django developer and co-founder of Kaleidos, co-founder of Taiga and member of PyLadies Spain. You can follow her @tdelatorreh.

How did your story with code start?

Some years ago I decided to change my career to something that I liked and allowed me to work on it. So I decided to leave my job and started to study a bachelors degree. Then I did an internship in the FOSS area of a company and got hired afterwards.

What did you do before becoming a programmer?

I went to the university and I studied Optic and Optometry, I liked Physics and Medicine so it seemed to have a bit of both (formulas and eyes preserved in formaldehyde) but, because of a difficult familiar situation I had to drop out and then, the part-time job I had for covering my student expenses turned into a full-time job and my source of income.

I worked in fast food restaurants and also as a salesperson. I guess that I got tired of working face-to-face with customers, people don’t have an off button :)

What do you love the most about coding?

I don’t know… So many things can be done! You are learning constantly, you never get bored.

It’s a job that changes continuously and you have to be able to endure the frustration, you are comfortable in a project because you know the programming language but another project begins and you have to start over again. For example, I have had to learn CoffeeScript, Backbonejs and jQuery in my last project and I hadn’t used them before.

I think what I like is the amount of possibilities you have of not getting bored.

Why Django?

When I had my first job I started using Python and Django and I’ve continued using it since then. I use it also in my spare time, it is a great framework, it has a very strong community behind and a very detailed documentation.

What cool projects are you working on at the moment/planning on working on in the near future?

In my job I’m working on a well-known tourist platform. In my spare time I have just finished the web page of my boyfriend’s rock band (I guess that I owed it him, he has written many songs dedicated to me).

At the end of this November I plan to give 2 Python workshops and 2 talks about motivation (to help increase the number of women developing software). Also I want to participate more actively in open source communities.

What are you the most proud of?

I am very proud to be part of Kaleidos. A company which tries to make things in a different way and be able to actively take part on it… it’s the best thing that has happened to me in my professional career.

Also I am very proud of what I’ve accomplished and what’s still to come…

What are you curious about?

I consider myself a very curious person, I think that the curiosity is the base of learning but, I would like to have days of 30 hours to be able to do everything I want.

Lately I’ve been interested in knowing why there are so few women developers and to think about what I can do to change the situation. I suppose that the motivation talks are a first step on that direction.

What do you like doing in your free time? What’s your hobby?

One year ago I fulfilled a girl’s dream, to have a horse! I spend a lot of my free time riding a Rohan (that is the name of my horse).

Yes, I am a Rohirrim, the only “rider of Rohan” who exists currently! (it is a very bad word play :D).

Also I spend time reading and watching cinema about science fiction or fantasy. I love travelling, trekking and mountain biking.

Do you have any advice/tips for programming beginners?

I don’t know if I am the right person to give advice but my key is the perseverance, I can’t let myself get discouraged. Sometimes it’s very difficult but if you continue working hard you will make it.

Thanks Teresa! :)

Annabell Ossowski

@OssAnna16

Django Girls Warsaw, 8th November 2014

Saturday morning, 8th November 2014, 8:00 in the morning. It’s really cold and dark, it’s also raining. Perfect weather to wake up, look out the window, cuddle up in the blanket to fall back asleep. And yet, 45 participants and 15 coaches are showing up even before scheduled time to spend the whole day building the internet. You could feel the excitement in the air!

It all started just few hours ago, when we met for the first time during the Installation Party. On a Friday evening everyone met at Laboratorium EE, our beautiful venue in the heart of Warsaw, to make sure that Python 3, pip, virtual environment, Django 1.7 and code editors are working perfectly on participants computers. 

It was also a great opportunity to network, talk to each other, drink some delicious cider or lemonade and eat amazing waffles. Everyone showed up despite pouring rain and really awful traffic in the city. Participants were so eager to learn we actually had to add more tables, because they didn’t want to stop their work after installing everything! But we also found time to make funny photos and pretty tattoos :) 

What’s even more important: we managed to make them excited about what’s going to happen the next day and put down a lot of the stress of meeting new people and just being in this new, stressful situation that is learning something completely new and scary!

Fast forward to Saturday morning, we’re welcoming everyone with a small gifts of some candy and Django Girls gadgets to help them go through the day. The delicious breakfast served by our amazing friends over at Bułka & Spółka is disappearing in minutes and we’re ready to code!

I did a quick opening explaining the goals for today and everyone get to work. 15 groups, each consisting of experienced coach and 3 participants. Additional coaches were also available to just jump in the hard situation and help everyone who needed that! 

Everyone was so busy and excited to build things, they almost didn’t noticed when the evil “G” decided to fall down from the wall :) Less and more technical problems were being solved one after another. At this pace, we could probably solve all world’s problems in a week! In addition, everyone is improving the tutorial on the way! Just during the workshop we’re merging 9 pull requests submitted by both participants and coaches.

When the day is almost coming to the end, we have one more surprise waiting for everyone: a special talk straight from the New York City! Lovely Erika Heidi, Developer Advocate @ Digital Ocean gave a really helpful talk about her story of becoming a PHP developer and treat us with amazing advices helpful to any rooky coder out there. Fortunately, Hangouts gods were in our favour and everything worked perfectly so we could enjoy a live talk delivered from 6,850 km away. Thanks technology! <3

Two hours later, we were finishing off with an amazing, wonderful & funny group picture! Everyone was sad to leave, but so happy and excited to continue the journey of building the internet.

We don’t have enough words to express our gratitude to everyone who helped us make it a reality. Thank you to all of our sponsors: Digital Ocean, Divio, Python Software Foundation, Github, Allegro.Tech, Applause, Bitspiration and 4developers. Special thanks to our hosts, Laboratorium EE, who let us use their amazing space in Warsaw. We send all the hugs and kisses to 16 coaches that went beyond our highest expectations to make everyone happy: Ola, Baptisław, Bartek, Paweł, Ania, Joanna, Justyna, Patrycja, Łukasz, Zbyszek, Loic, Thijs, Tomek Paczkowski, Tomek Ducin, Tim and Robert — you’re AMAZING. 

Of course, none of this would have happen if it wasn’t for Kasia Kamińska, who joined me in organising Django Girls Warsaw and fixed every problem within a blink of the eye. Finally, 45 wonderful participants whose energy and creativity exceeded everything we could have possibly dreamed of. 

We can’t wait for the next one!

Ola Sitarska

@olasitarska

Your Django Story: Meet Sorcha Bowler

This is a post in our Your Django Story series where we highlight awesome ladies who work with Django. Read more about it here.

Sorcha is a Python backend developer, as of a bit more than half a year ago, and loves her job. She is also someone’s wife and someone’s mammy. She has more hobbies than she really has time for and spends too much time on the internet.

How did your story with code start?

My code story started not long after I learned to read, typing BASIC programs up on the computer I was lucky enough to have in my house (my Dad’s a programmer) to draw pictures to the screen. In school we did some Logo stuff, and I had a lot of fun telling the little turtle on the screen where to move to and when to lift or put down its ‘pen’. My first introduction to a ‘real’ programming language (C++) was when my sister, two years ahead of me, came home from college wanting to show off what she’d learned. I loved it immediately. I did Computer Science and Software Engineering in college, and always really enjoyed the coding modules.

What did you do before becoming a programmer?

Well, as you can see from the answer to the last question, I have kinda always been a programmer. But for seven and a half years before working as a programmer I worked in SAP, as a Service and Support Consultant. I logged on to large customer systems, had a poke around and sent the customer a report telling them how to improve the performance of their systems.

What do you love the most about coding?

I love the ‘aha’ moments where something suddenly makes sense and works after not working for some time. I love feeling smart and powerful when I can make a computer do what I want it to do.

Why Django?

When I decided a few years ago to become a professional programmer, my brother in law and mentor recommended Python. I fell deeply in love with Python. Django is the Python web framework recommended by a lot of Python people.

What cool projects are you working on at the moment/planning on working on in the near future?

One of my other hobbies is LARPing at the Academy of Eblana (http://iga.ie/events/academy/) LARPs. I’m working on a Mamba (https://github.com/PyMamba/mamba-framework) (sorry Django!) system with a mysql DB to represent all the various elements of the game.

What are you the most proud of?

I wrote some code to integrate a third party API for age verification into our systems. I worked with a bunch of other developers to build that integration up and work it into the front end. It is now actually live and being really used by our actual customers.

What are you curious about?

Most things!

What do you like doing in your free time? What’s your hobby?

I run, swing dance, blues dance, play board games, LARP, knit, play computer games, and read the internet. Oh, and I write code! Sometimes I eat or sleep.

Do you have any advice/tips for programming beginners?

I do indeed. I recently gave a lightning talk on this very subject. The slides are here:

http://slides.com/sorchabowler/bootstrapping-a-programming-career/#/

and the video is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4MMSjMOP6g#t=2940

Thanks Sorcha! :)

Annabell Ossowski

@OssAnna16

Your Django Story: Meet Rachel Sanders

This is a post in our Your Django Story series where we highlight awesome ladies who work with Django. Read more about it here.

Rachel is a software engineer and tech lead for Linkedin and founder of San Francisco PyLadies. She has a degree in astrophysics from the University of California, Berkeley, but thinks computers are almost as cool as stars. When not coding, she’s an aspiring cellist and writer, and enjoys accidentally spilling glitter on the floor and finding it everywhere for weeks. 

How did your story with code start?

My mom worked as a secretary when I was growing up, and she occasionally brought home some of the first portable computers - 30 lb Compaq boxes the size of modern-day desktops with a 9” monochrome screen and 5 ¼ floppy drives. She’d let me play on them when she wasn’t doing work in the evenings, and I spent hours trying to figure out how it worked. This was before the internet, so I had no documentation and I knew no one else who was doing this sort of thing, I just found it fun. I didn’t get very far in terms of accomplishing anything except figuring out how to use 1-2-3 Lotus and the basics of DOS.

Sometimes, I wonder what would have happened to that little girl had she had anybody to ask questions of, or any books to read. It’s one of the reasons I’m passionate about education and outreach.

I didn’t truly start to code until after college. I graduated with from Berkeley with a degree in astrophysics, completely burnt out and discouraged from continuing because it seemed like there was no jobs and no future in that field. Having no idea what else to do, I got a job as a contractor running Word automation scripts that turned Word doc into stuff our customers actually saw, like HTML or PDFs. It was boring, slow work, because the scripts broke constantly. I learned how to fix them, because it was faster than reporting to the two ex-doc writers who programmed them.

The first bug I ever fixed was an integer overflow - the script crashed on a particular large Word document, on the 32,768th paragraph. I’d been buying coding books, trying to learn more, and I remember that number as being special, and I poured through the code trying to find that place, and yup, they’d stored the counter in a signed 16 bit integer. It made me feel amazing, to figure that out. It still makes me smile to remember that.

That job led to one where I did more coding, which in turn led to one that was even more coding, and so on and so on. Each job taught me more, and I tried to learn all that I could from what I was doing. Eventually, I ended up here at LinkedIn.

What did you do before becoming a programmer?

I took a small detour in between coding jobs where I tried out IT support. I much prefer coding.

What do you love the most about coding?

It brings me so much joy. I love math and problem solving, and coding just clicks with that part of my brain. As I’ve developed in my career, I’ve moved to building larger scale systems and using my skills to make tools and applications to delight and ease work for people. I love seeing what I make be useful.

Why Django?

I don’t work with Django professionally, although I like it quite a bit as a framework and use it for hobby projects. You can’t beat the ease of use and the library ecosystem. Somebody out there usually has written the thing you need to do. Laziness is a virtue in engineering.

What cool projects are you working on at the moment/planning on working on in the near future?

I’m an organizer for PyLadies, and we’ve grown massively over the last several years with dozens of groups all over the world. I’m in the midst of organizing a global event (using Django!) that everybody can participate in, where you take 24 hours to learn something new about coding, and teach someone else. I’m really excited about it, and I hope I get to share it with you all soon.

What are you the most proud of?

Helping start PyLadies. I know how difficult it is to scramble up the giant walls erected around the tech world and how hard it is to make it, and I want to give a hand up to as many people that I can reach.

Volunteer work is difficult and thankless at times, but it’s all worth it and more when people tell me they’ve gotten a job thanks to me. I can’t even tell you how awesome that is to hear. (I tell them I only helped. They did the real work.)

What are you curious about?

I’ve started reading about UI/UX best practices, and there’s a lot there the software world could learn from that field. Imagine you could track metrics on how long it takes to learn a codebase, or the average cognitive load it takes to understand a code path. That’s fantasy, of course, but I want to understand what’s hard about those problems and come up with best practices to minimize them.

I’m planning to spend a good portion of 2015 learning as much as I can on the field.

What do you like doing in your free time? What’s your hobby?

I love learning new things.  I picked up the cello a few years ago, and am starting to play music with other people, which is both terrifying and fun. I’m also learning to horseback ride, which is also terrifying and fun, although for different reasons.  And I’m participating in National Novel Writing Month to try and learn to be a better writer. In less lofty hobbies, I play more Diablo 3 and Hearthstone than is strictly necessary.

Do you have any advice/tips for programming beginners?

There’s nothing like solving a problem for yourself or someone else. I personally can’t learn anything without having a concrete goal to work towards. I’m learning iOS programming right now by solving a problem for another department.

Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Your code will be terrible. It’s okay. You have to be terrible before you get to kinda good. Find supporters and cheerleaders if you can, and keep at it. Find what interests you, and follow that.               

At the same time, if something isn’t working, take the time to dig into why it isn’t working. Don’t just mimic, try to understand what you’re doing and why. That’s the secret to learning anything.

Thanks Rachel! :)

Annabell Ossowski

@OssAnna16

Your Django Story: Meet Filipa Andrade

This is a post in our Your Django Story series where we highlight awesome ladies who work with Django. Read more about it here.

Filipa is a software developer from Portugal, living in Slovakia and working for a Finnish company with Python and Django.

How did your story with code start?

While my sister was applying for university in 2001 I got a glance at the book with the list of courses. I somehow decided I also wanted to apply to some course in the new campus close to where I was living. They only had Computer Science so I went for it. I took the exams again and entered. As I was working in a school I couldn’t go to many lessons. I remember after few months that some teacher was talking about code and I felt really bad that I didn’t know what it was. Later I found out that it was not about morse or da Vinci code ;)

What did you do before becoming a programmer?

I was a Physical Education teacher. I taught for 5 years in Portuguese schools, from kindergarten to high school.

What do you love the most about coding?

The possibility to see the result of my work very fast. I used to work in education so the results of my work could take weeks, months or even years to be visible (if they were). When you program you can see it immediately. I got addicted to this.

Why Django?

In 2007 I was working in a bank and my team leader was doing a lot of things with python even though we were supposed to be developing in .net. Once I had to make some script and he told me to do it in python. I had no idea how to do it. I started to learn online, made the script and then never stopped. Django came naturally as one of the web frameworks made with python.

What cool projects are you working on at the moment/planning on working on in the near future?

I am the kind of developer that has no side projects. It is a pity but I simply can’t do it together with a full time job. I have many ideas but I never manage to do something. I used to feel sorry but now I accept it. It is not mandatory to have side projects but maybe soon I will manage to do something useful :)

What are you the most proud of?

I think the fact that I improved in coding. In my first job I was pretty bad and even after finishing the degree it took me some time until I really started feeling I knew what I was doing. Now I can learn many news things faster, I have opinions and it is not difficult anymore to read technical articles.

What are you curious about?

Most of the time about how something works, about the reason why something is as it is and also about history. I am also curious about how people learn and I have studied this topic while I was a teacher.

What do you like doing in your free time? What’s your hobby?

Right now my free time is spend with my 8 months old son. We go for walks, play with toys and read kids books. In the old days I did a lot of sports, especially volleyball and biking. I used to play guitar. I play a lot of board games and I am very interested in backgammon. Me and my boyfriend spent hundreds of hours playing for money online and analysing games to improve our skills. The profit always went to new appliances to our home: blender, waffle maker and other. Lately I started going to pub quizzes and got addicted.

Do you have any advice/tips for programming beginners?

Yes. Read code and do concrete projects. Do not be scared if you don’t understand everything.

Thanks Filipa! :)

Annabell Ossowski

@OssAnna16

Your Django Story: Meet Helen Sherwood-Taylor

This is a post in our Your Django Story series where we highlight awesome ladies who work with Django. Read more about it here.

Helen is a freelance developer working in London and lives just outside of London with her partner. She’s been using Python since 1999 (before it had list comprehensions or booleans!) and in her free time she enjoys cycling, running, photography, travel and kinitting.

How did your story with code start?

In school I was very much inclined towards maths and science, and I’ve always loved solving puzzles so I think programming is a pretty good fit for the way my mind works.

I first coded when I was 12 on the ZX Spectrum we had at home, copying programs out of books and learning some of the basic concepts. I didn’t code for a few years after that, then at 18 I went off to university with my first computer all of my own, a 386 running Windows 3.1. It came with a QBasic interpreter and the Snake game as example code and I started hacking around with that in my spare time, adding new levels and realising I quite enjoyed programming.

Then I met my partner Jim, a long time computer geek (and now also a Django developer) who helped me to realise I could code for a living. I eventually got a better computer and started teaching myself Visual Basic, followed by C++. I got my first programming job in 1999, using C++ to generate television graphics. I also started learning Python around the same time. Since then I’ve worked with C++, Java, PHP, Python and Javascript. I’m now lucky enough to be able to work full time with Python and Django. Ten years ago it was very hard to find Python jobs, and it’s been really great to see Python grow in popularity since then - I think Django has helped a lot with that.

What did you do before becoming a programmer?

Programming was my first “real” job and I’ve been doing it for about 15 years now. I wanted to be a scientist when i was in school, but I didn’t really know about programming as a career option.

What do you love the most about coding?

A lot of things - solving a problem elegantly, fixing something that’s broken, making something faster, writing code that is beautiful to read. I love how many different things can be accomplished through coding, and there’s always so much more out there to learn. I get bored when things are the same for too long so it’s great to be part of an industry that’s constantly evolving and has so much variety.

Why Django?

For a start, it’s written in Python and that was enough to get me interested.

My first impressions of Django were just how much it gives you for free - the login system, the admin system, models, forms and so on, common things that often get written over and over (often quite badly) in web projects - it’s so nice to know those things are taken care of, and be able to focus on the interesting and unique aspects of a project.

What cool projects are you working on at the moment/planning on working on in the near future?

I don’t really have a personal project on the go right now. The last thing I did was a hardware project with a Raspberry Pi and a character LCD screen - the Pi runs a Python script which fetches train times off the web, and displays the next two trains. It sits in my hallway so as I’m leaving the house I can see instantly how long until the next train - have I already missed it, will I make it if I run, or can I have a nice leisurely walk to the station - extremely useful!

What are you the most proud of?

I helped build the BBC Weather site a couple of years ago and that’s probably the work I’m proudest of. In general, I’m proud of the work I put into every project, especially tackling some of the more challenging ones. Also, the ability I’ve built up over time to dive into new projects, read code and understand how everything fits together.

What are you curious about?

So many things! My work is mostly in web development but I like to look beyond that in my spare time. I’d like to do more hardware projects and learn more about electronics - I just got a MicroPython which is a tiny microcontroller that runs Python - and I’m trying to decide what to do with it!

I’m also intrigued by machine learning and image recognition and would love to do more along those lines - so far I’ve played around a bit with scikit-learn and tried a couple of tutorial competitions on Kaggle.

Another thing I’d like to do more with is Kivy, a platform for creating mobile apps in Python. I’ve made a couple of apps with it but would love to do more.

What do you like doing in your free time? What’s your hobby?

I love spending time outdoors when I’m not at the computer. I enjoy mountain biking and trail running, especially when there’s also a navigation / orienteering challenge involved. I also like to travel and see new places - I’ve done some bicycle tours across Europe including UK to Poland and UK to Corsica (different trips) and also travelled around south east Asia (no bike) which I loved, especially the food. I’m also into photography, and knitting cute little hats for my baby nieces and nephews.

Do you have any advice/tips for programming beginners?

Don’t worry about how much you know. It’s great that there are so many different technologies out there and so many ways to solve a problem - but the downside is that, no matter how much you know, there’s always somebody talking about some language or library you’ve never heard of, or haven’t quite got around to trying out - it’s easy to feel like you don’t know enough. Don’t let that get to you - be proud of what you do know and be prepared to keep on learning!

Also, when you get stuck on a difficult problem, don’t let it drive you crazy. Try stepping away from it, go and make a cup of tea, distract yourself for a bit - or try talking to somebody. They might have the answer, or it might just help to talk it through.

Thanks Helen! :)

Annabell Ossowski

@OssAnna16

Your Django Story: Meet Lynn Root

This is a post in our Your Django Story series where we highlight awesome ladies who work with Django. Read more about it here.

Lynn is an insomniac software engineer for Spotify, founder of the San Francisco Chapter of PyLadies, board member of the Python Software Foundation, and member of the Django Software Foundation. She has a business degree in finance and economics, but fell in love with programming in 2011. Lynn likes to speak. A lot. She particularly talks on the Python community, as well as the technical work she’s done.

How did your story with code start?

This is the “long” description: http://www.roguelynn.com/words/my-path-into-engineering/  

The TL;DR version: I wanted to get a master’s in financial engineering, which required knowing how to program in C.  I had no programming knowledge, so I took an online course through Harvard. It was there that I said “f$ck finance” and continued to learn how to code.

What did you do before becoming a programmer?

I was an analyst for a couple of different banks where I managed & analysed the bank’s assets & liabilities.  It was actually a pretty awesome time to be in that area since I joined right when the huge economic recession just began.  

What do you love the most about coding?

The aspect of creating something out of nothing - it’s so addicting. Some folks, myself included, have an innate need to create.  We have painters, poets, musicians, dancers, street performers - many other creative fields.  While I’ve dabbled in painting & drawing, adding the logic element you get from programming is just invigorating!

Why Django?

For that course that I first took, I wrote my final project using Django. To be honest, at that time, I was an utter n00b, and didn’t understand the concept of web frameworks and such. I just knew I wanted to write something in Python. Google helped; I think I literally searched for “websites in python” with Django being referenced many times.  

What immediately sold me was the tutorial. It was *exactly* what I needed; it told me exactly what to type and what to get working.

Looking back, that code I wrote for my project is absolute crap. But the Django tutorial stuck with me; I started leading PyLadies workshops based off of it, as well as hosted sprints to help Django’s beginner documentation.

What cool projects are you working on at the moment/planning on working on in the near future?

I’m super excited - Spotify’s API console (https://developer.spotify.com/web-api/console/) was released a month or two ago, which I wrote myself (shhh…in Flask…don’t tell anyone!). What I am really psyched about is the code that I wrote for it, I am open sourcing it. It will be two different projects, and the first one will be out soon. Watch out for my obsessively excited tweets (@roguelynn) and blog posts about it :D

What are you the most proud of?

To be honest and a touch solipsistic, I’m most proud of myself.  

Before entering into the world of programming, I didn’t find much to be proud about. Sure, I went to college, did the extra curriculars that I felt I should do, studied what I thought was acceptable; basically went through the motions to be an “average” member of society.

But within a span of 3 years, I taught myself how to program (still learning!), have spoken at about 20 conferences (totally lost track), help start many PyLadies locations as well as run the SF chapter, have been elected to the board of directors for the Python Software Foundation, somehow got myself featured in a major glossy magazine, and - most importantly - gainfully & happily employed as a software engineer.

I’m not so much proud of my accomplishments, but more so of the discipline I have taught myself (in which the accomplishments are what I see as rewards).

What are you curious about?

Tough question.  I’m actively curious about the changing atmosphere of diversity within our industry.  I’m looking forward to see how this movement affects the industry a decade or two from now.  I say “actively” since I find myself doing a lot of work to better the environment for minorities (focusing on women), both through PyLadies and from within Spotify.

Passively (as in, I like watching from my armchair), I’m curious about the future of security and privacy for the average user and developer. When will it be super easy, cheap, and reliable to deploy a simple website over HTTPS? (getting there!) Or VPN and GPG being wide-spread among the average user?

What do you like doing in your free time? What’s your hobby?

It varies between personal/pet code projects, arts & crafts (I love the forthemakers.com monthly subscription crafting box!), and in general, embodying my spirit animal - the sloth.

Do you have any advice/tips for programming beginners?

A lot of folks think that one needs strong motivation to learn how to program. You can be super motivated one day, and completely apathetic the next.  If you just rely on motivation, you’ll have a lot of unfinished projects.  

My key advice is discipline.  I will assure you that discipline is not an inherent quality. Similar to muscular strength and endurance, the brain needs “exercise” to develop discipline.  

I say to start small, start with the “5 lb weights” - like a handful of Learn Python the Hard Way exercises every day (it’s okay to repeat stuff too!) - and soon the habits that you’ll build will pay off. And just like building strength & endurance, you may get “injured” or “catch a cold” forcing you to back off; you will experience a lot of frustration from sh!t not making sense, cryptic error messages, or accidently deleting your database. It’s okay - take a break for a few hours, days, maybe a week or so. But having discipline will allow you to come back and plow through those moments where you lack motivation.

Thanks Lynn! :)

Annabell Ossowski

@OssAnna16

Django Girls Chat

A lot of things happened since first Django Girls workshop took place four months ago. We ran five events so far. 160 women attended. We plan next 13 workshops, so this number will be much, much higher very soon. 

Although so many new Django Girls events will take place soon and so many people are bringing Django Girls to their cities, we are overwhelmed by the number of applications we receive. 10 - 15% of all people who are willing to take part in the workshop will get a place. It is very, very hard to reply to so many awesome people that there is no place for them at the workshop. It breaks our hearts!

We also noticed that more and more people are trying the tutorial on their own at home. The tutorial page is visited daily by 300-500 people. They have no coach and they have to deal with all problems on their own. And we know that it can be very difficult, especially when you know nobody who can explain things to you.

That is why we decided to create a Gitter room for our tutorial. Gitter works like chat or irc, but requires absolutely nothing except a browser to use, which is perfect for beginners. We asked our previous and current coaches to visit the chat from time to time and create a place where all the people who are struggling with some part of the tutorial can visit and ask for help.

To join you need to have a GitHub account and go to the room we’ve created. You can also find a link to the chat on tutorial’s repository.

If you are struggling with tutorial and can’t move forward, try to ask for help there! It’s a safe place to ask even the easiest questions. Or ask questions even if you don’t know what precisly you want to ask about. 

And if you know Django and want to share your knowledge and help others learning Django and programming - you are welcome here, too!

Your Django Story: Meet Yamila Moreno Suárez

This is a post in our Your Django Story series where we highlight awesome ladies who work with Django. Read more about it here.

Yamila is a Python and Django developer. She cofounded and currently works at http://kaleidos.net, a Madrid-based venture delivering free software for innovative projects. She particpates in open source communities in Madrid where she lives and is part of Pyladies Spain. You can follow her @yamila_moreno.

What did you do before becoming a programmer?

Since I was a little girl my vocation was reading and writing. I read as much as I could, and wrote about any idea which crossed my mind: from the funny to the absurd. There are few things more important than a true vocation.

So when I went to university I decided to follow my dream and studied Spanish Philology and I got my degree in Literature Theory and Comparated Literature (I swear it’s an actual career).

I moved to Madrid from my small town in the North of Spain. I continued my studies and knew lots of people; one of them specially helped me to change my path. I knew him from the Spanish Tolkien Society (love reading and storytelling…), and we became friends. He taught me about Open Source, helped me with my first Knoppix, and LateX, and command line (simple bash scripts were like the most awesome magic).

How did your story with code start?

When I was finishing my university studies I was satisfied with my literature career, but I knew I didn’t want to work as a teacher (the easiest job for this degree). So I decided I had to study a bachelors degree, to be prepared for another kind of jobs.

It didn’t really mattered to me what to study, so I looked for advice about studying hairdressing, mechanics or programming. The same good friend recommended for me to study programming; I trusted his judgement and studied the basics of programming for two years. Soon I was enjoying my new knowledge and I found out a brand new vocation and this time I was willing to work with it.

What do you love the most about coding?

Solving specific issues. I was used to reading, and thinking about abstract or philosophical topics and coding was actually solving problems. Small ones at first, and bigger tools as I grew as a coder.

Coding is always changing: new languages or just the same old languages with more attention, new frameworks; flame wars! (Groovy vs Python in my office; just like old grouchy enemies ^_^). The fact is that you can learn something new everyday, it’s a constant challenge.

Why Django?

When I joined my first FOSS team they needed me to learn Python and Django. It wasn’t my decision but I can see that, for a total newbie, Python and Django are a winner combo: you are quickly making complex webs or scripts. It’s very well documented and has a big community ready to help.

What cool projects are you working on at the moment/planning on working on in the near future?

In my spare time, I maintain http://www.tutasadeparo.es, a website which shows statistics about unemployment in Spain (with Django and R!!); I’m becoming the web master (it’s sooo from the 90s) of Python Madrid and Python Spain. I try to contribute to the open source community with code (less than I would like) or participating in some communities (as Pyladies Spain or Agile Girls) to encourage women to get into tech as far as they want. Yes, we code!

In my daily job, I work as a Django developer, with awesome colleagues; this last year, we have been working on a tourist platform.

What are you the most proud of?

Proud is an ambiguous feeling for me; still I can mention some achievements: I taught my brother the pleasure of reading, I had the opportunity of helping friends who really needed it, I was at the beginning of Kaleidos (a dream which still remains), and last year I was part of the First PyConES, which was a big success for the Python spanish community.

What are you curious about?

Lately I have been very interested in the “Internet of Things” fashion: it’s funny and this technology has reached everyone, no matter their origin or gender. It’s cheap, well documented and you have it “libre”. I love the idea that, with few resources, it’s possible to make the most of your creativity.

What do you like doing in your free time? What’s your hobby?

My hobbies are mainstream: reading, traveling, geocaching, hiking, going into the nature, riding my bike, did I say hiking? These days, I’m learning roller skating and diving. I like to mix open air activities with others like learning about programming, making community, attend events, and cooking.

Do you have any advice/tips for programming beginners?

I think that joining a local group, to share, ask ,and code together is a good way to keep the motivation high and continue improving. Also it’s important to find something of your interest, something which amuses you, so the technology is a way to take this another hobby to a greater depth.

Thanks Yamila! :)

Annabell Ossowski

@OssAnna16

Your Django Story: Meet Svetlana Margetova

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 is 23 years old. She likes design and programming. She is originally from Banská Bystrica, Slovakia, but lives in Prague at the moment. Svetlana works on projects with her friends, organises Django meetups and likes the startup scene and new IT technologies.

How did your story with code start?

When I was 15 years old, I helped my brother with web design. He coded web pages for friends and when I saw the final web page, I became interested in coding too. At first I was thinking about design as a field of study. So I started with graphics in Adobe Photoshop. One year later I realised that design is not for me and that I would like to do something more interactive, so I decided to learn web development first.

Although, I studied at a business academy, I learned coding at home. I started with the basic structure of HTML and how to make the web pretty with CSS. When I understood the whole DOM structure I added interactive elements to web sites using JavaScript.

After 2 years of coding web pages, I decided to study Computer Science at university. So I started at the university in Bratislava, where I learned real programming aspects. I understood how we should write code. I started with C and C++, so I could easily learn object-oriented programming. There were many girls in our class at university, but only a few of us learned programming at home.

In the last year of my bachelor study, I learned a lot of about programming. I learned Java as the main programming language. But that Java wasn’t for me. On the other hand I learned about design patterns in Java.

In the end, I knew that I want to be a backend developer, but I like frontend development too. I started to choose the right programming language for me.

What did you do before becoming a programmer?

Before becoming a programmer, I was the designer and I played with marketing. But it wasn’t for me. I loved math, science and logic tasks. Every night I tried to solve one logic question and then I realised that we can easily code this task in real programs and I started thinking about how we can use this to solve real-life problems.

What do you love the most about coding?

I like that I can solve real problems. I really like analysing and then transforming the whole analysis process to code that works for people. I am also a very creative person. I can write code for myself or for friends for every idea that we have.

Why Django?

After graduating university, I tried to find the right programming language for me. I started with PHP because I wrote my bachelor thesis in the PHP programming language. But it is not very flexible, it has many bugs and updates and I didn’t know what PHP framework to use.

Some programmers told me about Python and Ruby. I started a Python course when I learned code engineering at Coursera. The teacher at the course told me that Python is good for scientific and logical programming. It was what I would like to do in my future. I started with the easy installation of Python and first steps in the command line. When I saw how dynamic it is, how easy, it read only English words…It was great.

When I finished with my Python projects I wanted to do something real and bigger: applications for people. I heard about Flask, but I found a bigger framework, which had everything I needed. So I found Django. It was the best year of my life, when I learned it. I discovered ORM mapping with Django ORM, easy connection of classes and databases, how easy I can handle my views and template inheriting system was fascinating.

I coded small project for myself at first and I knew that Django is the best fit for me and my projects.

What cool projects are you working on at the moment/planning on working on in the near future?

I had company with my friends called Waterfall, where we developed some apps in Django for clients. We started with our own project called EnabledCity. It is an app for disabled people in Palo Alto City.

Now, I have 3 main projects that we are developing with my team every day with a Django framework, we combine classic development methods with single page app principles.

Our main projects are:

SocialCube - an app for connecting organisers with speakers and sponsors

IceVision - an app for interactive managing projects, teams, clients and the whole workflow

TEDx App -  an app for TEDxConferences

What are you the most proud of?

It is a difficult question. I don’t know exactly. I really like that I code in Django, throughDjango development I got to knw many people and built a small community around me with people who like Python and Django too.

What are you curious about?

I am curious about how to optimise processes, how to understand people. I like culture and workshops where I can learn a lot or organise on my own. Sometimes I watch TEDx talks and think about how I can change my life to be better person.

What do you like doing in your free time? What’s your hobby?

In my free time, I like bicycling. But at the moment I don’t have a bicycle. I like running and many sports activities. I really like learning and reading books, not only about programming. I tried to learn how to be motivated and always be an optimistic person. I’m trying yoga at the moment.

Do you have any advice/tips for programming beginners?

In the beginning, it is hard to start. At first, you should know some basic math if you want to be a good programmer. You should start analysing things around you step by step, realise how can you transform your problem to code and how to solve it. You can start with logical tasks, after understanding algorithms you learn the basic syntax of programming. You can improve every day. When you finish basic programming task such as vector design and basic sort algorithms you can start with learning object oriented programming where you will change your way of viewing the world as objects around you.

And don’t be afraid to ask senior programmers to advise you, when you have a problem. Learning programming is an iterative process and every day you definitely can learn something new.

Thanks Svetlana! :)

Annabell Ossowski

@OssAnna16