How Django Girls helped me publish a children’s book on learning to code!

This blog post was written by Agnieszka zgud. Thank you Aga :)

I came across information about a Django Girls workshop in a kind of transitional period. I quit my office job and was looking for a new one, freelancing a bit as a graphic designer and learning front-end from online tutorials. It was exciting and frustrating at the same time and I really wasn’t sure if I can ever make it past a simple website. Soon after sending my application to Django Girls I got a job as a graphic designer and put coding aside so the workshop was a challenge for me. And I was a bit sceptical about: ’ you will make a site with CMS within 8 hours and it’s gonna be fun’. Then I met my team and tutor (if you ever read it-thanks so much Loic, you were fantastic) and it all started. To my great surprise after 8 hours we all, (as far as I remember) more than 100 girls, managed to finish the task, and it really was fun (for the same 8 hours I think my brain was slowly boiling). But the best part was to see how many of us came there, curious and brave in a way to learn something new, probably unfamiliar and still a bit (too) unobvious. 

I never actually got into programming, but thanks to the workshop I got this idea that even if I don’t do it now I actually might do it. And learning this tiny part of coding I started wondering how does it happen that I write commands in a language quite similar to my own and I get a response from something I know works on binary code, or in fact on crude electricity.

I talked about it with my partner, Szymon, and we found out we just have no clue. We both knew something, but still, it didn’t add up. So we made a research and started solving the puzzle. On the other side of our research we found out that it’s not that complicated after all, but there is still one unsolved question: if it’s not a rocket science why so many people know nothing about it even if our life is filled with electronic devices?

Shortly after we found out about a contest for a children’s book and, being both designers we decided to use our fresh knowledge and make a book explaining how computers and people communicate. We didn’t win, but we kept working on the project on and off for next 2 years.

We decided to publish it by ourselves and here it is, on 7th of October this year we are gonna release the book. So keep your fingers crossed, we’ll see how it goes!

Check it out here!

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