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

Kathleen is a builder of systems involving collaborative creativity, crowdsourcing, and/or computer vision. She makes awesome things out of computers and the internet.

How did your story with code start?

When I was 10, my mom (an electrical engineer) got me a Geocities account and handed me a book on HTML. I made a website where people could “adopt” cats that I had drawn. In high school, college, and grad school, I took classes in computer science and math. The more I learned, the more I was able to accomplish.

I was thinking about this when I wrote “My Nerd Story” (http://kaflurbaleen.blogspot.com/2014/02/my-nerd-story.html) a while ago. When I was a teen, I was pretty into punk rock and the DIY culture that went with it. I screenprinted my own t-shirts, made my own wallet out of duct tape, put pyramid studs and safety pins on everything, went to local shows, watched from up close as my friends composed and performed their music. This has absolutely affected my relationship with code – I reject that I am merely a “consumer” of other peoples’ apps; I need to be able to create technology myself, view the source code and see how something works, and share what I’ve made with others. I must help others create and express themselves.

What did you do before becoming a programmer?

I guess was a kid before I was a programmer. I played with teddy bears and built forts. I sewed clothes for my teddy bears and crafted duct tape wallets and screenprinted shirts with pirate penguins on them.

What do you love the most about coding?

I love that learning about coding feels (perhaps is) exponential in its rewards. As I gain more skills and better command of my tools, I’m able to learn new things more easily and to tackle more creative and advanced projects. The more I learn and the more I practice my *craft* of programming, the greater impact I can potentially have on the world.

Why Django?

I was using PHP before, and it was a nightmare. My mom mentioned Django because she was learning it, so I installed it and started poking around. I went to a Startup Weekend where I worked on a team with someone who walked me through the basics (Django is kind of complicated). I had a twitter friend who was teaching herself Django to start her own wedding planning company, which I actually used for my wedding!

Jessica McKellar said (on this blog): “95% of the time, what I need is a database-backed website with administrator support, and Django lets me get up and running in just a few hours.” and this is totally the reason I use it, too.

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

I’m pretty much done with the website for #FeministHackerBarbie. I could imagine adding more features, but at this point, the meme lives on within the internet itself. People only need my site to create images easily, and they can (and are) posting and hosting them elsewhere!

I’m currently working on a personal project that has been gnawing at me for years. It’s not ready yet! But I’m also using Django for part of it.

What are you the most proud of?

I’m proud of all of the ecosystems that I’ve built that have allowed people contribute in a way that adds up. I have been surprised and amazed so many times at what people have drawn or composed or built through projects like my collaborative sketching application Sketch-a-bit, the Feminist Hacker Barbie website, and my 3D photography reconstruction game PhotoCity.

What are you curious about?

I’m curious about what drives people and leads to a fulfilling life. Making/creating/sharing *feels* really important to me. How can I help unlock the creative potential of other people?

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

Browsing the internet is probably my main hobby. I currently live in the Santa Cruz mountains, so I have excellent access to beautiful hiking locations! I also like to eat, cook, take photos, read, and of course… program stuff.

Do you have any advice/tips for programming beginners?

Share what you learn! There is probably someone out there on the internet who is at the same level as you, who is currently stuck on the same thing you just got yourself unstuck on. So take some time to write/blog/tweet about your learning process. It’ll help you to reflect on it as well! I blog about my approaches to certain tricky problems. People have thanked me for providing the answer they were in desperate need of. I’ve even blogged about things that didn’t work, and have had people help me figure out why something was broken. Find a buddy or a mentor. (Or offer your services as a mentor if you are not a beginner.) As a beginner, you will get stuck. You may be able to get unstuck on your own (and I prided myself on this a lot when I was in high school and college) but it can be so much faster and less frustrating to have someone else unstick you. There are some simple things about debugging to keep in mind. Someone has probably blogged about them in depth on the internet, but here are 2 little points: Read the error message! It will hopefully give you a major clue as to where your bug is. If something is broken, don’t try to change a bunch of things at once. Work incrementally until you solve it, so you know exactly what was broken and how you fixed it.

Thanks Kathleen! :)