Author note
• The main article (The Three Roads DDD Built) is a technical analysis. This piece is the personal backstory of the person who wrote it.
• Migrating a large-scale C++ server to the JVM with Akka in Málaga, Spain. Encountering DDD for the first time in Perth, Australia. And then meeting both of them again, years later, when Korea finally turned to MSA.
• What stayed with me longer than any specific technology was simply the experience of different engineering cultures and ways of working.
🌐 한국어 원문 → Akka와 DDD, 그리고 해외 개발 경험 이야기 — 작성자 회고
1. Why this article came back to me
Seeing DDD getting talked about again lately brought back memories of overseas projects from years ago.
The technical analysis lives in the main article; this piece is the personal context behind why I wrote it. Neither Akka nor DDD was something I first met in Korea.
2. First time meeting Akka — Málaga, Spain
Back when Akka had just begun arriving in the Korean developer scene, I was on a project that needed to port a large-scale C++ server to Java and ship it overseas.
We were on Java 6~7 at the time. The Netty-based ecosystem was nowhere near as mature as today, and high-performance networking know-how on the JVM was still scarce. Just moving a workload from C++ to the JVM — the heavy concurrent-connection workload that C++ had been handling — was a real challenge in itself.
We worked with a partner from HP, brought in their latest hardware, and ran load tests over and over. The JVM was often the first thing that gave out. I can laugh about it now, but at the time I practically lived in the building until those load tests passed.
In that era, Akka.IO was a genuinely impressive piece of technology. It didn't give you raw C++ native performance, but it let you implement high concurrency and distributed processing at a realistic difficulty level. Problems that would normally require throwing many more servers at the wall could be solved without growing infrastructure that dramatically.
When the project finally wrapped and just before I flew home, the local team threw me a farewell party in Málaga, Spain — Picasso's hometown. I still remember sharing wine in the middle of that city, celebrating the close of the project.
3. First time meeting DDD — Perth, Australia
I first ran into DDD on a dev team in Perth, Australia.
That team talked about DDD the way other teams talked about the Agile Manifesto. The team lead would even check on each person's DDD learning progress during 1:1s.
The problem was that I, at the time, didn't yet really grasp Agile itself. English wasn't fluent for me either, and DDD felt almost like an expansion pack layered on top of Agile.
I picked things up here and there, but adapting wasn't easy, and I returned home without making the kind of contribution I had hoped for. From the perspective of personal career growth at that moment, it felt like an experience that ended without finishing.
4. Two or three years later — what felt like failure turned into early prep
But two or three years after returning home, MSA started becoming a serious conversation in Korea, and naturally DDD came along with it. The concepts I had touched briefly overseas started reconnecting.
I hadn't returned a DDD master — far from it. But that earlier exposure ended up helping me a lot through the SI, B2B, B2C, and enterprise projects that followed.
Looking back, what had felt like failure at the time turned out to be surprisingly valuable preparatory learning.
5. For reference — companies I actually visited
If you're curious about working overseas, here are a couple of companies that might be worth a look:
- Málaga, Spain: theworkshop.com
- Perth, Australia: vgw.co
Neither place is mentioned as often as Silicon Valley, but each region has its own engineering culture and arc of growth.
6. Looking back — what stayed with me more than the tech
My own career has been a mix of wins and losses, but looking back, what stayed with me longer than any specific technology was simply the experience of different engineering cultures and ways of working.
The Akka of Málaga and the DDD of Perth didn't stay behind in those cities. They came home with me and came alive again when Korea reached the MSA era. That's why the main article lands at the same place — not different answers, just different stages.
🧭 Back to the main article → The Three Roads DDD Built — Why You Should Re-read Eric Evans, Vaughn Vernon, and Greg Young