DSF member of the month - Lily Foote

For February 2025, we welcome Lily Foote (@lilyf) as our DSF member of the month! ⭐

Lily Foote is a contributor to Django core for many years, especially on the ORM. She is currently a member of the Django 6.x Steering Council and she has been a DSF member since March 2021.
You can learn more about Lily by visiting her GitHub profile.

Let’s spend some time getting to know Lily better!

Can you tell us a little about yourself (hobbies, education, etc)

My name is Lily Foote and I’ve been contributing to Django for most of my career. I’ve also recently got into Rust and I’m excited about using Rust in Python projects. When I’m not programming, I love hiking, climbing and dancing (Ceilidh)! I also really enjoying playing board games and role playing games (e.g. Dungeons and Dragons).

How did you start using Django?

I’d taught myself Python in my final year at university by doing Project Euler problems and then decided I wanted to learn how to make a website. Django was the first Python web framework I looked at and it worked really well for me.

What other framework do you know and if there is anything you would like to have in Django if you had magical powers?

I’ve done a small amount with Flask and FastAPI. More than any new features, I think the thing that I’d most like to see is more long-term contributors to spread the work of keeping Django awesome.

What projects are you working on now?

The side project I’m most excited about is Django Rusty Templates, which is a re-implementation of Django’s templating language in Rust.

Which Django libraries are your favorite (core or 3rd party)?

The ORM of course!

What are the top three things in Django that you like?

Django Conferences, the mentorship programme Djangonaut Space and the whole community!

You have been a mentor multiple times with GSoC and Djangonaut Space program, what is required according to you to be a good mentor?

I think being willing to invest time is really important. Checking in with your mentees frequently and being an early reviewer of their work. I think this helps keep their motivation up and allows for small corrections early on.

Any advice for future contributors?

Start small and as you get more familiar with Django and the process of contributing you can take on bigger issues. Also be patient with reviewers – Django has high standards, but is mostly maintained by volunteers with limited time.

You are now part of the Steering Council, congratulations again! Do you have any words to share related to that?

Yes! It’s a huge honour! Since January, we’ve been meeting weekly and it feels like we’ve hardly scratched the surface of what we want to achieve. The biggest thing we’re trying to tackle is how to improve the contribution experience – especially evaluating new feature ideas – without draining everyone’s time and energy.

You have a lot of knowledge in the Django ORM, how did you start to contribute to this part?

I added the Greatest and Least expressions in Django 1.9, with the support of one of the core team at the time. After that, I kept showing up (especially at conference sprints) and finding a new thing to tackle.

Is there anything else you’d like to say?

Thanks for having me on!

Thank you for doing the interview, Lily!