Your Django Story: Meet Barbara Shaurette

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

Barbara is an open source veteran, with over fifteen years of experience as a professional developer, much of that as an active participant in the Python and Django communities. She founded PyLadies Austin, and teaches and mentors through organizations such as PyLadies, Girl Develop It and Code Scouts. Currently, she works as a Python developer for Cox Media Group.

 

How did your story with code start?

My code story started long before my Django story. In the mid-to-late 90’s, back when AOL was a popular thing, I was so curious about how the internet worked. One night I slipped and accidentally right-clicked on a page, saw ‘View Source’ for the first time, and something clicked in my brain. I started teaching myself HTML, and not long after got my first coding job at Berkeley Systems. They were just moving out of their 'Flying Toaster’ and 'You Don’t Know Jack’ CD phase and moving all of their games online, so with the help of some great mentors I got exposure to other languages (ColdFusion, Java), as well as the basics of game and web development. Before I left that company 3 years later, I was creating and publishing my own games for them.

 

What did you do before becoming a programmer?

My degree is in education, but my teaching career only lasted for a few years after college - it was heartbreaking to discover, after all that work, that it was so hard to make a living doing what I loved. Luckily the internet revolution came along in time to give me a new thing to love and a new opportunity. (I did work as a secretary for a few short years in between.)

 

What do you love the most about coding?

It’s a creative challenge. Building an app or a web site or a game or whatever you like is not so different from the process I use to design a new costume or a new piece of jewelry. You have a problem to solve, so you decide on an approach, then you implement it and watch it run. It’s an art, or at least shares many qualities with the artistic process. And there are always new directions to turn in, new skills to learn - it never stops being fascinating.

 

Why Django?

I was introduced to Django while working with an online advertising company almost 10 years ago. I dove into it, and have stayed with it all these years, largely because of the community. I do not work with Django exclusively, and I’ve been involved with many other open source communities since, but Django has an exceptional level of involvement, everyone’s helpful, everyone’s happy to share what they’ve learned. Ten years in, Django also remains the most feature-complete and best-documented framework I’ve worked with.

 

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

Not actually a piece of software, but more software development teaching materials. I just got back from PyCon, where I (along with Katie Cunningham, Davin Baragiotta and David Cormier) taught Young Coders for the third year in a row. Young Coders has been a beginner class, but I’m working on an intermediate curriculum to debut at PyCon 2016 in Portland.

 

What are you the most proud of?

Probably Young Coders - although creating a kids’ class was not originally my idea, I’m so glad that PyCon organizers invited me to work on it a few years ago. Since then I’ve refined the curriculum a lot, and it just gets better every year. Seeing our students’ faces light up when they realize what they can do with Python never stops being a magical experience.

 

What are you curious about?

That changes every day. Today, it’s trying to wrap my head around what makes Solr4 tick. Tomorrow, it will be something different.

 

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

I used to spend all my free time hacking, but I’ve grown out of that. I do still work on occasional side projects, but for the most part, when my work day is done, I step away from the computer and do something that lets me work with my hands. I sew (I was a reenactor for a long time, so I’ve been making costumes even longer than I’ve been coding) and make jewelry. I recently took up stained glass, and I’m about to start classes in fused glass and PMC. I also crochet, paint, and do a lot of collage art.

 

Do you have any advice/tips for programming beginners?

“Don’t compare your behind the scenes to someone else’s highlight reel.” Programming is hard, and every programmer - even the experienced ones - has struggles. Just because you don’t see that, don’t assume you’re the only one.

Thanks Barbara! :)

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