A few months ago, I wrapped up the Common Core at 42 (Campus 19 at the time I was doing it)—aka the school where you learn by building, breaking, and occasionally crying over compiler errors with friends. Shortly after, I started my internship at DPG Media. I expected a steep learning curve. I didn’t expect how fun it would be to climb.
Here are the surprises, lessons, and small wins from my first weeks.
The 42 trains you to be resourceful: read the manual, break down problems, and ask for help. That mindset helped a lot. But in a production-focused environment, there’s a bigger emphasis on standards, clarity, and long-term maintainability. It’s less “make it work” and more “make it work, make it clear, make it last.”
Java Associate = confidence unlocked, I earned the Java Associate certificate before diving into about two and a half weeks of Core Java practicals. That combo gave me a solid foundation—and a reality check. We built a web server from scratch using only Core Java, then layered features until it connected to PostgreSQL and served multiple APIs.
Architecture isn’t a luxury—it’s a speed boost! Honestly... We were introduced to Hexagonal Architecture (HA). On paper, it’s about ports and adapters; in practice, it’s about keeping your domain logic pure and your edges swappable. I’ll be honest—it took me almost the whole practical for HA to click. But once it did, new features had an obvious home. Refactoring felt safe instead of scary.
Code reviews are free mentorship. I made plenty of mistakes: tightly coupled code, business logic sneaking into repositories, over-engineering where simplicity would do, and not structuring with HA in mind. The list was… educational. But feedback is a superpower. I started anticipating comments, designing with reviewers in mind, and we even did peer-to-peer review. That’s when my code—and my thinking—leveled up.
Going from a bare-bones server to handling routes, validation, logging, error handling, and persistence taught me far more than passively watching videos. The narrative matters: you see why we keep domain logic independent, why adapters handle external concerns, and why a good port design lets you swap infrastructure without rewriting business rules.
Small wins fuel momentum. Passing the Java Associate exam was a win. So was shipping a well-structured feature, writing a test that caught a bug early, or getting a positive feedback on a review. Small wins stack—and they keep you curious. And honestly, the biggest lessons came from the mistakes I fixed.
Conclusion
DPG Media is giving me the guardrails to build software that lasts—and people who make learning fast. One month felt like a week, and I learned a ton. Big shout-out to Geert for guiding us through the Java practical. I’m taking these lessons with me for the long run 🏃.