Does a trainee ruin a hackathon project?

As a trainee in software development, you start out as a person who knows less than others, but makes more chaos than others, only to leave the team at the right moment. I'd like to tell you a story about why I decided to also work in the messy kitchen of the hackathon and how it went.

written by Ben Luno Becker, Trainee at DKB AG

Motivation

As trainees, we want to find out where we belong and where our strengths lie. I am an IT trainee at DKB, and Code Factory was my first port of call. I received a warm welcome here. Over the course of 15 months, the trainee program includes 5 different stations that we can choose according to our interests. When the hackathon was announced at my first station, I knew I had to be there. I was hoping to meet new colleagues and learn from them.

Heating up

On December 4th, I joined Team Expensum, which aimed to reimburse expenses for team events or learning budgets in a clear process. We were continuing a hackathon project from the previous year. I had low expectations of my contribution to the team but was curious when it finally started. So, with a mixture of frontend, backend and design, we boiled up last year's soup. For the first time, I had the opportunity to use my knowledge of the Java programming language from my studies and hobby in a professional environment.

Surprise

I was useful! It was amazing. Due to the small scale of the project, I immediately understood what it was about and how the code worked. The hackathon spirit had gripped us, and we programmed like crazy. I involuntarily learned the art of solving merge conflicts and almost managed to destroy the entire system several times. Apart from that, we made great progress and were very happy with the result after this hackathon week.

But the food wasn't ready

I'm not talking about the generous delivery budget that provided us with delicacies every day, no, I'm talking about the fact that this project, this “re-cooked but quite tasty soup”, would take much longer than we would have thought at the time.

Over the next few months, we met again and again to make small changes and tweaks so that we could finally serve the eagerly awaited product. Personally, I always enjoy coming back to this project and seeing the impact I was able to bring to it.

What has it achieved?

Of course, I hope that everyone who gets to taste it soon will roll their eyes in delight, nod their heads and enthusiastically pay for the next team event.

But I also gained something from it personally. First and foremost, of course, I learned a lot. About software testing, working together in a full-stack team and how projects can be conceptualized on a small scale. It also enabled me to encounter people from other teams, which is how I ended up at Team Infinity in the second quarter of this year, where I also really enjoyed it. And finally, I learned that I'm not stupid and unsuitable if I don't immediately understand the functionality of a complex production system, but rather that software development is what I would like to spend a large part of my life doing. In an environment as pleasant as that of Code Factory, that’s a piece of cake.