Arul ChristhuRaj Alphonse is the author of Mulesoft for Salesforce Developers; we got the chance to sit down with him and find out more about his experience of writing with Packt.
Q: What are your specialist tech areas?
Arul: Integration, API, MuleSoft, SoftwareAG webMethods and Google APIGEE.
Q: How did you become an author for Packt? Tell us about your journey. What was your motivation for writing this book?
Arul: My Integration and web services/API journeys began more than 16 years ago. In 2006, After many years of involvement in designing and developing over thousands of Integrations/API, I felt it was time to share my experience with others on Integrations/API. That’s when I decided to approach Packt and write book like this.
Q: What kind of research did you do, and how long did you spend researching before beginning the book?
Arul: More than 3 years now, I am preparing tutorials, YouTube videos, online courses to share my knowledge and experience on MuleSoft. I felt always there was a need of book if some one really like to learn it via book (paperback or online version).
Q: Did you face any challenges during the writing process? How did you overcome them?
Arul: I also work in IT firm full time as a Architect. So only time, I need to write a book is at outside office hours or weekends. It thought it is easy to write a book. But amount of review from content editorial team (more than 3-4 times thorough review ) and technical reviewer feedback, It look lot of time from me to write/rework/complete this book successfully. It is kind of 7 months journey from planning, structuring the book and writing the book. I just followed the timeline as per Packt and always Packt was guiding it wherever required. So it was easy to overcome challenges quickly.
Q: What’s your take on the technologies discussed in the book? Where do you see these technologies heading in the future?
Arul: For over two decades, Middleware technology has been helping us, evolving and never stopping. As part of digital transformation everyone needs a tool to connect/integrate different systems quickly to shift the data across different internal/external applications. After salesforce acquisition of MuleSoft, customer gets complete product suite for their Integration, Salesforce Customer 360 and many other tools in their stack. This brings complete eco system for every organization to transforms digitally and helps in speed to market.
Q: Why should readers choose this book over others already on the market? How would you differentiate your book from its competition?
Arul: This book is a complete guide for anyone who want to start their career with MuleSoft. It covers Anypoint Studio, DataWeave and Anypoint Platform. It also covers different type of connectors including Salesforce. This books also covers good amount of assignments and Q&A for interview preparation.
Q: What are the key takeaways you want readers to come away with from the book?
Arul: To become successful MuleSoft Developer.
Q. What advice would you give to readers learning tech? Do you have any top tips?
Arul: This book has variety of content to cover from basic to advanced. So I would recommend you to go through each chapters in the same order and also practice the exercise as per the book in your laptop to get familiar with it before starting another chapter.
Q. Do you have a blog that readers can follow?
Arul: I enjoy preparing the recordings for my tutorials and upload them into TechLightning YouTube Channel. The videos can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/c/TechLightning/videos
Q. Can you share any blogs, websites and forums to help readers gain a holistic view of the tech they are learning?
Arul: I would recommend developers to check content in https://help.mulesoft.com/ to see different issues and recommendations from others to solve a particular issue. This enhances troubleshooting skills and learn new things in MuleSoft.
Q. How would you describe your author journey with Packt? Would you recommend Packt to aspiring authors?
Arul: Packt’s team was always encouraging and professional. They always made sure I didn’t miss any deadlines , I had a great time working with them. Packt is without a doubt one I would recommend to aspiring authors..
Q. Do you belong to any tech community groups?
Arul: Yes, I’ve been a part of the MuleSoft Community for many years now. I am sharing knowledge over video based tutorials in YouTube (TechLightning channel), Udemy courses, providing assistance, and participating in other community-related activities. I am also MuleSoft Mentor since 2019.
Q. What are your favorite tech journals? How do you keep yourself up to date on tech?
Arul: Medium, DZone and blogs
Q. How did you organize, plan, and prioritize your work and write the book?
Arul: Prepared the outline with headings, subheading. then prepared the schedule/timeline for individual chapters. Finally followed the plan. so It was easy to plan and complete it on-time as per schedule.
Q. What is that one writing tip that you found most crucial and would like to share with aspiring authors?
Arul: Have a habit of writing few pages everyday instead of writing / finding one day to complete entire chapter.
You can find Arul‘s book on Amazon by following this link : Please click here
