Your 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! :)
