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

Svetlana is 23 years old. She likes design and programming. She is originally from Banská Bystrica, Slovakia, but lives in Prague at the moment. Svetlana works on projects with her friends, organises Django meetups and likes the startup scene and new IT technologies.

How did your story with code start?

When I was 15 years old, I helped my brother with web design. He coded web pages for friends and when I saw the final web page, I became interested in coding too. At first I was thinking about design as a field of study. So I started with graphics in Adobe Photoshop. One year later I realised that design is not for me and that I would like to do something more interactive, so I decided to learn web development first.

Although, I studied at a business academy, I learned coding at home. I started with the basic structure of HTML and how to make the web pretty with CSS. When I understood the whole DOM structure I added interactive elements to web sites using JavaScript.

After 2 years of coding web pages, I decided to study Computer Science at university. So I started at the university in Bratislava, where I learned real programming aspects. I understood how we should write code. I started with C and C++, so I could easily learn object-oriented programming. There were many girls in our class at university, but only a few of us learned programming at home.

In the last year of my bachelor study, I learned a lot of about programming. I learned Java as the main programming language. But that Java wasn’t for me. On the other hand I learned about design patterns in Java.

In the end, I knew that I want to be a backend developer, but I like frontend development too. I started to choose the right programming language for me.

What did you do before becoming a programmer?

Before becoming a programmer, I was the designer and I played with marketing. But it wasn’t for me. I loved math, science and logic tasks. Every night I tried to solve one logic question and then I realised that we can easily code this task in real programs and I started thinking about how we can use this to solve real-life problems.

What do you love the most about coding?

I like that I can solve real problems. I really like analysing and then transforming the whole analysis process to code that works for people. I am also a very creative person. I can write code for myself or for friends for every idea that we have.

Why Django?

After graduating university, I tried to find the right programming language for me. I started with PHP because I wrote my bachelor thesis in the PHP programming language. But it is not very flexible, it has many bugs and updates and I didn’t know what PHP framework to use.

Some programmers told me about Python and Ruby. I started a Python course when I learned code engineering at Coursera. The teacher at the course told me that Python is good for scientific and logical programming. It was what I would like to do in my future. I started with the easy installation of Python and first steps in the command line. When I saw how dynamic it is, how easy, it read only English words…It was great.

When I finished with my Python projects I wanted to do something real and bigger: applications for people. I heard about Flask, but I found a bigger framework, which had everything I needed. So I found Django. It was the best year of my life, when I learned it. I discovered ORM mapping with Django ORM, easy connection of classes and databases, how easy I can handle my views and template inheriting system was fascinating.

I coded small project for myself at first and I knew that Django is the best fit for me and my projects.

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

I had company with my friends called Waterfall, where we developed some apps in Django for clients. We started with our own project called EnabledCity. It is an app for disabled people in Palo Alto City.

Now, I have 3 main projects that we are developing with my team every day with a Django framework, we combine classic development methods with single page app principles.

Our main projects are:

SocialCube - an app for connecting organisers with speakers and sponsors

IceVision - an app for interactive managing projects, teams, clients and the whole workflow

TEDx App - an app for TEDxConferences

What are you the most proud of?

It is a difficult question. I don’t know exactly. I really like that I code in Django, throughDjango development I got to knw many people and built a small community around me with people who like Python and Django too.

What are you curious about?

I am curious about how to optimise processes, how to understand people. I like culture and workshops where I can learn a lot or organise on my own. Sometimes I watch TEDx talks and think about how I can change my life to be better person.

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

In my free time, I like bicycling. But at the moment I don’t have a bicycle. I like running and many sports activities. I really like learning and reading books, not only about programming. I tried to learn how to be motivated and always be an optimistic person. I’m trying yoga at the moment.

Do you have any advice/tips for programming beginners?

In the beginning, it is hard to start. At first, you should know some basic math if you want to be a good programmer. You should start analysing things around you step by step, realise how can you transform your problem to code and how to solve it. You can start with logical tasks, after understanding algorithms you learn the basic syntax of programming. You can improve every day. When you finish basic programming task such as vector design and basic sort algorithms you can start with learning object oriented programming where you will change your way of viewing the world as objects around you.

And don’t be afraid to ask senior programmers to advise you, when you have a problem. Learning programming is an iterative process and every day you definitely can learn something new.

Thanks Svetlana! :)