A WORKSHOP introducing more women to computer programming has been heralded as a great success and more events could now follow in the future.
More than 30 women, with varying levels of experience, attended the Oxford Django Girls event in Summertown, north Oxford, last week.
The group now wants to organise more similar events to tackle the issue of women being underrepresented in the field of coding.
One of the organisers Oliver Bazely, said: "It was great, we had a number of people circling a career in programming who have taken the opportunity to gain more experience.
"We even had a 12-year-old girl who signed up and came along with her father, who is a programmer. He was delighted she could try it. She turned out to be very good at it."
He added: "We want to use the momentum from this to organise workshops and possibly gain sponsorship.
The 35-year-old freelance programmer recently moved to the city and has joined Digital Oxford – a network of coders and programmers – to encourage others to learn the skill.
His fiancee Marianna Souza, who has some experience in programming through her job as an oceanographer, attended the workshop and was pleased to see so many women there.
The 30-year-old, from Rose Hill, said: "There is definitely an issue in that women are underrepresented in programming, it is very male dominated.
"It's important because if young girls see woman making a career out of programming they will realise it could be a career path for them.
"The workshop was a really good experience, and everyone there was very friendly and I learned a lot."
Django Girls is an international organisation, which runs events globally to introduce women to different languages of computer programming, such as Python, which is used to create web pages.
Websites such as YouTube, Wikipedia, Yahoo and Google all use Python and it is also used by NASA and the UK Government.
The budding coders were taken from little or no skills to being able to create a fully functional blog at Ewert House last Saturday.
Event organiser Piers Storey said: "Getting started in programming can be a daunting experience.
"We wanted to make coding much more open and accessible and to let people take their first step in a positive and supportive environment."
He added: "We really hope our participants use the experience as a springboard to a career in coding, but we would be happy if they just enjoyed the day."
The Django Girls tutorial is available online at djangogirls.org/oxford where you can also find details of their next event.
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