Your Django Story: Meet Manisha Sharma

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

 

Manisha is a student at UC Berkeley studying Cognitive Science with a minor in Computer Science exploring the intersection between social good and tech. She’s passionate about how edtech, data and design will influence social change in the world. Recently, she interned at an edtech startup, WriteLab, a writing platform that uses machine learning to improve your writing. She’s currently working at Berkeley’s Institute of Data Science using natural language processing and on Daily’s Cal’s Data project team. In her free time, she volunteers for Girls Who Code and BlackGirlsCode, works on perfecting brunch meals, and loves going to live concerts.

How did your story with code start?

Before college, I had no idea what computer science was but loved problem solving and analyzing problems from multiple perspectives.

In my freshman year, second semester, I was surfing for a class to fill my schedule when I came across CS10: Beauty and Joy of Computing. I was mesmerized by the description which included phrases like “Beautiful applications that have changed the world” and "How computing empowers discovery and progress in other fields”. I absolutely loved the class and the projects and started taking courses towards the minor.

 

What did you do before becoming a programmer?

Before I met code, I was an aspiring math teacher. I worked as a math tutor at Kumon and also as a homework tutor at the local library.

 

What do you love the most about coding?

The process of getting stuck and then figuring it out. That “THIS TOTALLY WORKS!” feeling is the best. I also loved creating. Having ownership over the things I made not only boosted my confidence but inspired me to keep creating and believing in my abilities.

 

Why Django?

Django was an instant hit with me because I loved Python. And the documentation was great. The tutorials I found online were very newcomer friendly.

  

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

At Berkeley Institute of Data Science, I’m working on Text Thresher, our interface for crowd sourcing text annotations and tagging to accelerate and improve information extraction for Social Science Research. In the upcoming summer, I’ll be working at Pandora as an engineering intern on the Ad Team using Big Data technologies. I’m thrilled to be learning the ropes of data engineering and hope to use these skills to create data-centric solutions that inspire social change.

 

What are you most proud of?

I migrated here from Fiji and am proud to represent Fijian-Indians in higher education and tech.

I’m also the first engineer in my family and I couldn’t be more grateful to my family for supporting me.

 

What are you curious about?

I’m curious about how language shapes thought. How are certain concepts and ideas expressed in different languages and how does that affect our understanding of the world and people?

 

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

I love listening to music and supporting the musicians I love. I’m a SoundCloud, Spotify, Pandora and YouTube junkie. Recently, I’ve been exposed to the awesome world of arduinos, laser cutting and 3D printing. In between classes, I try to sketch out ideas that I can hash out in the weekends.

 

Do you have any advice/tips for programming beginners?

Get comfortable with the idea that you will never "know enough”. There will always be something more for you to learn especially in tech and learning is a journey that has its ups and downs but as long as you’re moving forward, you’re on the right track! Also, get yourself out there as much as possible. Go to a hackathon, volunteer at a tech workshop, write a small tutorial, blog about your favorite pieces of code, and so on.

 

Thank you so much, Manisha!

 

If you would like to suggest someone to be featured in the Your Django Story series (or would like to nominate yourself!), please email us at story@djangogirls.org!

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