Your Django Story: Meet Tricia Campbell
This is a post in our Your Django Story series where we highlight awesome ladies who work with Django. Read more about it here.
Patricia “Tricia” Campbell is Canadian and lives and works in Montréal. She started working as a programmer in 1980 and stayed in the industry until 2010. She taught part-time from 1994 - 2010, after which she started teaching full-time. She has held a variety of positions in the field, including applications programmer, systems programmer (telecom) devops, and systems and network administrator. She’s fluent in C/C++, Java, System 370 Assembler, and Bash scripting, and is familiar with PHP, JavaScript and Python. Her passion is seeking ways to make computer science more appealing for women and girls.
How did your story with code start?
I did not know what I wanted to do as a career path. I was in advanced math in high school so someone suggested Computer Science. I took a three-year college course and worked immediately afterward.
What did you do before becoming a programmer?
I was in high school and college.
What do you love the most about coding?
The creative aspect of it: I can have an idea and create something from scratch. Code itself can be very syntactically and structurally beautiful. You can see the hand of a master in code. The fact that the field is always changing and there is always an interesting puzzle to solve keeps me interested as well.
Why Django?
Two reasons: 1) I want to learn more Python and 2) I have a pet project that needs server-side data. Currently the project is in beta. The server-side is hosted on OpenShift with a PHP + MySQL. I want to implement it in Django as the back end and in order to deliver a web interface in future.
What cool projects are you working on at the moment/planning on working on in the near future?
The project I just mentioned. I have a beta, or proof of concept, version of an app with a test database. I want to expand and improve on it. The database will be women in computer science, past and present. The front end is currently an Android app that allows searching. It is a big undertaking and I am hoping to include some Django Girls stories if I can. Both front-end and back-end will be open source. The project is on my GitHub account but not in any deliverable format just yet. I am also looking into using GCM (fun puzzle!).
What are you curious about?
The evolution of the cloud and cloud services. It’s back to the mainframe paradigm but you can call up a whole VM!
What do you like doing in your free time? What’s your hobby?
I love traveling. My favourite exercise is swimming. I like to meet with friends and work in my garden. I also like to knit.
Do you have any advice/tips for programming beginners?
Everyone can and should learn how to code, but not everyone wants it to be their career. If you enjoy creating code then be persistent, ask questions, and don’t be shy to ask for help. If you can, find a mentor. Women need to take back ICT. There are not enough women in the field. We hold up half the circuits!
Thanks Tricia! :)
If you would like to suggest someone to be featured in the Your Django Story series (or would like to nominate yourself!), send an email to story@djangogirls.org!
