Your Django Story: Meet Agata Grdal

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

Agata Grdal was an attendee of the first Django Girls workshop in Berlin. She organizes local Python meetings called wroc.py in her home city, Wrocław. She likes eating healthy, getting lost in new places and singing songs while driving. She’s trying to work, study, do additional projects and stay sane at the same time.

 

How did your story with code start?

When I was about nine or ten years old, I created my first blog. That was the time when I wanted to become a writer. I learned HTML and CSS to make it look pretty. Hey, I know what you’re thinking! The answer is: no, it wasn’t pink and sparkling! Then, a year ago, I took an introductory programming class at my university. We were taught basics of C++ and I got into it pretty quickly. I decided to learn a little bit more. There was this course starting on Coursera where you could learn Python. Sadly, I didn’t finish it, because my studies at university didn’t leave enough free time for me to do so, but this course gave me one thing - I fell in love with Python.

 

What did you do before becoming a programmer?

I was studying Mathematics and desperately trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.

 

What do you love the most about coding?

I love so many things about it! But the most alluring thing for me is that it’s both science and art. Maybe I will never write a book, but I will write beautiful code instead. ;) It’s empowering. You can convert your ideas into reality. Also, I think it’s brilliant that you don’t need many years of experience nor expensive equipment to create great stuff. Also, there are a lot of free tutorials online and many already answered questions on stackoverflow.

 

How did attending a Django Girls workshop influence your life/career? What did you get out of attending a Django Girls workshop?

It gave me the boost to keep learning. I know it sounds silly, but being 21, I feared it was too late for me to start. I decided to keep on learning and got a job quickly afterwards. This workshop gave me so much positive energy that I decided to give some of it back to the world and organize Django Girls in my home city. Also, what’s even more important, I’ve met wonderful people, like Markus, my mentor at Django Girls Berlin or Ania, with whom I co-organize Django Girls Wroclaw.

 

Why Django?

Because of Django Girls. Because of people. Because of Python.

 

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

I don’t know if I can talk about it. Two months ago someone came to me and said: “Hey! I have this <insert cool idea here>. I saw you did something with Django. I have some experience in Python. Do you want to collaborate?” Of course I said yes and now I’m a part of fantastic team and learn a lot while tinkering with Django. So it’s one more thing that I owe Django Girls!

 

What are you the most proud of?

I’m proud of being the co-organizer of Django Girls Wrocław. It took me, Ania and Asia four months, but the feedback we got was overwhelmingly positive and I think it was worth the effort. We had amazing coaches and superb attendees that were working hard the whole day, and at the end I think everyone left the workshops a little bit richer in experience, knowledge and positive thoughts.

 

What are you curious about?

I would like to have a chance to play with Raspberry Pi or Arduino. Never had either in my hands. :)

 

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

Programming is my hobby. And when I’m not coding, I’m watching talks from conferences, funny cat videos or Ellen DeGeneres show. I also have soft spot for the English language. I read books in English, watch movies without subtitles. It’s so musical and concise. That’s why nearly every song in English sounds good. But I feel the happiest when I just lay in my bed, read a good book and know deep inside that I’ve done everything that I planned for this day. Eh, it’s a rare feeling.

 

Do you have any advice/tips for programming beginners?

Ahh, as I still feel like a beginner, I could write the whole list! Let me tell you what helped me the most: Find someone you can learn with. I took my first programming class with my friend. It is much easier to learn when you can talk the problem through with someone. You can help each other. It’s uplifting when you can help someone and explain the parts that you grasped quicker. On the other hand, if you don’t understand something, your programming buddy can explain it to you like a non-programmer to non-programmer, without clouding the image with sophisticated wording. Secondly, don’t give up too quickly. When you start learning programming there is this euphoria, everything is so easy, logical and fun. Then comes the moment when bugs are piling up, you get overwhelmed, nothing seems easy or logical - it feels like a dog flying a helicopter. Remember, it’s just a phase. I have one of our DG posters glued to a wall - the one that says “Bugs come and go. Skills stays forever.”. Learn early how debugging works! The last thing - balance practice and theory. Some things are much easier to understand in practice than in theory, but too much practice and not enough theory will make you waste your time on simple things.

Thanks Agata! :)

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