Same for me. Jumping into the code can be fun at times. But if the software is not modelled well, a lot of bugs will orginate from structural issues. When you see those, the bugs become anoying to fix because you basically know new ones will pop up eventually since the root cause is not adressed. Applying concepts like DDD will be of very little value without a profound understanding of the domain at hand. This is mostly established by non-coding activities.