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

Sara is a Python and mainframe developer at the University of Texas at Austin. Although she’s found a home in the field of higher education administration, she’s still a librarian at heart. You can find her on twitter @saradgore.

How did your story with code start?

When I learned about the field of information science, I finally recognized a spot in which my varied interests converge. I started studying Python on my own so that I could be an active participant in this world and find new ways to wrangle information.

What did you do before becoming a programmer?

I studied French literature, taught English as a second language, worked in libraries and worked at Kinko’s for many, many years. Eventually I went back to school for a degree in Information Science.

What do you love the most about coding?

It allows me to express myself creatively. I can build useful things out of words.

Why Django?

Django allows extremely quick development, while still providing a structured environment and hewing closely to best practices. Of course, these advantages exist because of the amazing Django community.

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

I have a personal project that I built that generates vegan recipes on the fly. I just need to tweak a few things before I release it into the world.

What are you the most proud of?

The Django project that I’m most proud of is a system I created that allows users to build custom Django forms from an abstract, user friendly interface. Front line business users use the interface to manage their own asynchronous processes. It freed up full time developers who were assigned to do custom work for that set of business users.

What are you curious about?

Organizational dynamics, botany, cat psychology, Javascript frameworks, functional programming.

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

Studying languages, reading, writing, riding my bike, cooking, eating. I spend a lot of time evangelizing for the books I love.

Do you have any advice/tips for programming beginners?

Be bold! Beginners have things to contribute to the community too, so let your voice be heard. Contribute to code bases, join meetups, speak at conferences. Admit when you don’t know something and watch the offers of help pour in. Also, learn to listen. The community is one of the things that makes Django great, and the best way to take advantage of that is to be receptive to other voices.

Thanks Sara! :)