How Django Girls helped me become a developer

This blog post was written by Amanda Tjernlund. Thank you Amanda :)

I attended the Django Girls 2016 workshop having almost no coding experience to begin with. It was great fun and I was amazed at how we were able to get a simple application up and running in only a day. Being around so many women was really inspiring too and it pushed me to keep learning, go to more tech events, and look for opportunities to build upon my newfound knowledge.

At one of these tech events for women, I met the co-founder of Northcoders and was encouraged to apply for their first cohort of Accelerate, an intensive full stack programming course. I ended up getting a scholarship and spent the next three months learning JavaScript development at a rapid speed, together with students who were highly motivated but inexperienced just like me. From there I went on to interview for a company called AccessPay that had a .NET application built in the C# language. I decided it was a fun challenge to learn another language and way of working, studied like crazy for the tech test, and ended up getting my first development job.

It was an incredibly rewarding, difficult, intense year and I’m glad I didn’t give up those times I was tempted to. Working as a junior developer without a computer science degree in a tech team of only men, I have to admit I still have a severe case of imposter syndrome. But I keep reminding myself that in software development you never stop learning. Even senior developers have to pick up new things daily.

If you are thinking about getting into software development, I’d say go for it! Just make sure you surround yourself with people who are supportive and help you get to where you want faster. I’m hoping to see lots more women in tech soon.

This year I came back to coach for Django Girls Manchester 2017!

Django Girls is a non-profit that teach programming to women all around the world. Want to help us? Support us!