Our development team was a vibrant mix of experience and fresh talent. We had three seasoned developers (including myself), two team leads overseeing our projects, and four interns eager to learn and contribute. I was assigned to mentor two of these interns, a responsibility that added a new dimension to my role.

The intern program was structured as a year-long engagement, with a new batch of four joining us each year. This constant influx of fresh minds kept our team dynamic and pushed us to stay current with our teaching methods and technical knowledge.

While I was deeply involved in creating the Hyper Distribution System (HDS), our comprehensive Android app for field sales, I wasn't working in isolation. The project became a perfect training ground for our interns.

We mapped potential and existing clients within a 10km radius, integrated a check-in system for sales reps, and included features for reporting closed deals and showcasing product catalogs. The complexity of the project allowed us to divide it into manageable modules, perfect for intern projects.

My two interns were each assigned specific modules of the HDS to work on. One focused on the client mapping feature, while the other tackled the product catalog system. My role expanded from just coding to guiding, reviewing, and sometimes debugging their work.

I found myself not just juggling Kotlin, Java, and PHP as I built both the frontend and backend, but also explaining these technologies to eager minds. There were days when I spent more time at the whiteboard than at my keyboard, sketching out system architectures and explaining code structures.

This experience pushed me in new ways. I had to articulate my thought processes, justify design decisions, and sometimes, admit when I didn't have all the answers. We'd research solutions together, turning challenges into learning opportunities for all of us.

The project was a turning point for all of us. There were nights when we all dreamt in code, and days when the interns (and sometimes even I) felt like giving up. But with each challenge overcome, we grew not just as developers, but as a team and as problem solvers.

Watching the interns grow from hesitant coders to confident developers who could handle significant parts of the project was incredibly rewarding. By the end of their year with us, they were contributing features that genuinely enhanced the HDS.

This chapter in my career taught me the delicate balance between being a developer and a mentor. I learned to see the bigger picture, not just in terms of system architecture, but in terms of team dynamics and personal growth.

As each batch of interns completed their year and a new group arrived, I refined my mentoring approach. I became better at identifying individual strengths and tailoring my guidance accordingly. This experience laid the groundwork for my future roles, where leadership and mentorship would become increasingly important.

The HDS project, with its complex ecosystem spanning user experience to data management, became more than just a technical achievement. It was a testament to what a diverse team with a mix of experience levels could achieve when working together, learning from each other, and pushing the boundaries of their abilities.