Your Django Story: Meet Giorgia Amici
This is a post in our Your Django Story series where we highlight awesome ladies who work with Django. Read more about it here.
Giorgia was born in Rome 26 years ago. At the age of 17 she decided to leave her family and joined the army, she still wonders why. After that experience Giorgia moved back to Italy to a city far from her hometown to finish her first degree and since it was always her dream to live in London she eventually moved there. After a period of struggling with two jobs, Giorgia had saved enough money to apply for a MSc at UCL and receiving the acceptance letter was one of her biggest satisfactions. Straight after her graduation Giorgia participated in a really intense programming bootcamp: She already knew Python and Django but there she came across Ruby, Rails, TDD and most of all JavaScript and it was love at first sight!
Programming has given Giorgia the freedom she had always been looking for: the freedom to create whatever you want! Giorgia has been travelling around the world and living in loads of places and the only thing she needed was her laptop and her curiosity to mix with different people!
How did your story with code start?
I started coding during my MSc. I was studying GIS and Statistical Analysis and the software we were using had the option to customize any tool with your script hence, I started studying Python. That was the most frustrating exam EVER and was the one with the lowest score! :) That made me really upset and made me study Python up to 20 hours a day since I wanted to redeem my self. In the end, I realised that I fell in love with any aspect of coding: frustration, really small achievement, again frustration and again a small achievement until you finally finish your project and you think it is the best code you have ever typed, UNTIL someone reviews your code and inserts a lot of comments! (wasn’t that great after all!).
I then decided to start studying programming seriously and I went to a bootcamp: I was confident with Python and Ruby but I came across TDD and that was really painful! It’s hard to write tests first before any line of code (you need to adapt your mindset)! After a period with Ruby and Python, someone had the brilliant idea to introduce me to Javascript. I got frustrated again…but I knew it would have been a matter of time! Now I use as much JS as I can: Angular, pure JS, jQuery…and my next goal is to learn server-side JS: node.js!!!
What did you do before becoming a programmer?
I studied ancient Greek and Latin for 8 years (from when I was 14 till 22). In that lapse of time I lived in a lot of different Italian cities and in Paris. Then I moved to London to work and save money to give my career a different perspective and in end I was one of the 8 people selected by UCL for one of their MSc courses.
What do you love the most about coding?
It is a really highly rewarding profession. I love all the phases of working on a project:
brainstorming (which technology do we want to use?)
CRC cards
always be open-minded about your project: things might change along the way!
frustration and debugging: 70% of your time is spent dealing with those two aspects!
deploying YOUR project: you have actually solved a problem for someone! You will leave the world a bit better than you have found it
In all those phases you have a community of people for each of the languages of aspects (BE - FE)! It’s amazing how programmers are keen to help as long as you come with a concise and specific question (hidden meaning= you need to put the effort before asking)!
Why Django?
Djago is AMAZING!! It is really fast and secure and although this framework does a lot of things for you behind the scenes, it’s really easy to know when it fails which part is failing since the files that Django creates for you are really explicative (that does not happen with Ruby on Rails!).
What cool projects are you working on at the moment/planning on working on in the near future?
In my spare time I amdesigning a dashboard for crossfit athletes using different technologies and I am trying to TDD every aspect of my project.
I am as well spreading some UCL projects using mainly Django and I am designing a script for GRASS GIS (open source software for Spatial Analysis).
What are you the most proud of?
I designed a Blackjack game from the ground up and was really fun!
What are you curious about?
I would like to learn all the potentials of node.js. It’s such a new and powerful technology and this attracts me.
What do you like doing in your free time? What’s your hobby?
I am a serious crossfitter: I love training crossfit because you never know what your workout is gonna be like and it is always different (so your body does not get used to anything). I love also doing relaxing things like visiting places or expositions. I am also learning the British Sign Language.
Do you have any advice/tips for programming beginners?
Don’t be afraid to hit the wall (repeatedly)! It’s a really hard profession because things are evolving continuously hence, you need to accept the partiality of your knowledge.
Thanks Giorgia! :)
