Your Django Story: Meet Julie Barbic
This is a post in our Your Django Story series where we highlight awesome ladies who work with Django. Read more about it here.
Julie is a freelance web developer who founded her own company, Humanist Web, last year. Her goal is to only create websites with a positive impact on society, such as those that advance environmental, social good, and related causes. She currently lives in France in the beautiful city of Bordeaux, but her hometown is Paris. She has also lived in Sydney (Australia) for eight years. It was while living in Sydney that she first found out about Django Girls! :-)
How did your story with code start?
Even though I studied a bit of programming at my engineering school, I really started learning about programming during my last year internship where I had to programmatically simulate the flight of an unmanned aircraft. It was all in C++. This internship set my path for my first job that was also into the world of simulators. So that’s how it all started!
What did you do before becoming a programmer?
I was a student at an engineering school and ironically I was not really into programming at all at the time, as I couldn’t see the utility of it. Typically, I need to see that something is useful in some way before I feel an interest in it.
What do you love the most about coding?
What I love the most about coding is that it is logical, and if you go step by step, you can follow what it is doing. I enjoy finding out how something works and, if it’s not working, I enjoy investigating and resolving the issue. I also love the process of creation: you start with nothing and when you finish you have a website or application that a lot of people can use and that has the potential to help them change the world. That’s really powerful. It took me a long time to see that being a programmer is actually akin to being a kind of artist, as you repeatedly go through the process of imagining things and then creating them.
Finally, I like the fact that in programming there is no in between, no maybe. There is only True or False; either working or not working. There is no confusion.
Why Django?
I love Python and Django for their simplicity and conciseness. I like it when the code is neat and straightforward and easy to read.
What cool projects are you working on at the moment/planning on working on in the near future?
A few but they are secrets for now :-)
What are you most proud of?
I am proud of many things and I tend not to regret anything I do as I believe I do my best with what I know each moment.
But I will say that I’m most proud of the fact that I know I can rely on myself. Whatever I want to achieve, I can do, because I set goals for myself and stick to them.
Oh, and of course I am proud of having created my own company. It feels like the start of an awesome adventure!
What are you curious about?
I am curious about pretty much everything but my interests aside from IT are predominantly around nature, protection of the environment, music/singing and self-development.
What do you like doing in your free time? What’s your hobby?
What I do for a living I would say is already a hobby, and I wouldn’t say I have free time because everything I do is to achieve a particular goal or purpose. I could put a mix of different things into hobbies though: like spending time with my parents, meditating, yoga, reading about self-development, listening to music, singing etc.
Do you have any advice/tips for programming beginners?
Don’t let yourself feel overwhelmed or stressed out by everything you don’t know. Rather, try to build small blocks of knowledge and use logic to find conclusions.
How did attending a Django Girls workshop influence your life/career?
For the first time, last Saturday, I attended a Django Girls workshop (with Django Girls Bordeaux) as a coach. I realized that I had more patience than I thought when it came to explaining and repeating things. I didn’t get annoyed or anything.
What did you get out of attending a Django Girls workshop?
The satisfaction to have made a difference to someone’s else life and have made things much clearer for them than they were at the beginning. Inspiring even just one person is priceless :-)
Thank you so much, Julie!
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!
