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

Jamillah is a software developer currently living in Kampala, Uganda. She’s very excited about tech innovations and pushing boundaries with everything she sets her mind to, to be the best she can be in whatever she does. When Jamillah isn’t writing code, she spends her time giving the fictitious characters that run in her head life and a home in her very personal journal that will one day become a best seller.

How did your story with code start?

I started coding when I joined university, that was about four years ago. I was doing software engineering in school, but to be honest it was not love at first sight. The first programming lecturer I had was really intimidating and she never passed on the chance to let us know how hard it was. So I stayed away from coding and stuck to writing project documentation which most of the female students in class did.

But in my second year at university I started attending hackathons and coding events, that’s when I realised that I actually enjoyed coding. I joined all female communities like Girl geek and WOPA that were about empowering girls in tech. This really built my confidence and I begun to realise that it wasn’t as hard as some people made it out to be, it was a whole world of new possibilities. And I have never looked back ever since then.

What did you do before becoming a programmer?

I was basically a student, but beyond that I did some personal fictional writing. I still do but not as much as I would want to.

What do you love the most about coding?

Coming up with solutions to everyday problems that could be affecting people all over the world, that to me is something that adds meaning to my life. Being able to use code to leave a positive mark on the world, thats what I love about coding.

Why Django?

I was first introduced to Django 10 months ago, prior to that, I had heard about it but I had no idea what it was about. But doing the WOPA workshop that was happening at Outbox which is a tech hub in Uganda I had to learn how to use the technology. It weird because I used to be more interested in mobile development than web development until I read about Django and all its capabilities and how it made separation of responsibilities so easy and well defined. I had used MVC- pattern in Android but it wasn’t as clean as it was in Django. I just made it easy for me to learn Python which was a new programming language to me at the time.

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

I am working on a application to help small scale businesses in Uganda better cost their products and also another application that can be used by primary school kids in my country for revision in their different subjects. I have repos of this on my github account.

What are you the most proud of?

Being part of a team that is initiating young female programmers into the world of tech and coding. Being able to explain the concepts that I myself have just recently learnt and passing them on to someone else.

What are you curious about?

I’m curious about life, about the possibilities that are out there that I can be apart of.

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

I like to write, I like trying out new dishes and also searching for new indie rock music on the internet.

Do you have any advice/tips for programming beginners?

Do not sit in a corner with your laptop and a textbook and think you are going to spend 24 hours with yourself and learn to code. Go out and meet like-minded people, join the community and have fun writing code You can learn a lot more by being around people who have been coding longer than you have. May the force be with you.

Thanks Jamillah! :)