Chanaka Fernando is the author of Designing Microservices Platforms with NATS; 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?
Chanaka: Microservices, Integration, Enterprise Software
Q: How did you become an author for Packt? Tell us about your journey. What was your motivation for writing this book?
Chanaka: One of the product manager’s at Packt asked me to write a book on NATS after seeing one of my articles on DZone. I have been writing on Medium and DZone for many years prior to this event. I decided that it is the right time to become an author.
Q: What kind of research did you do, and how long did you spend researching before beginning the book?
Chanaka: I have been researching and writing on Microservices for a couple of years prior to start of this book authoring process. I spent a couple of months to do research on NATS.
Q: Did you face any challenges during the writing process? How did you overcome them?
Chanaka: The main challenge was meeting the deadlines for chapter delivery. Since I was writing the book while working on a highly demanding job function, I had to spent extra hours and weekends to complete the book.
Q: What’s your take on the technologies discussed in the book? Where do you see these technologies heading in the future?
Chanaka: Microservices and NATS are two of the hottest topics in the technology world. They will evolve with the time and there are a lot more things to clarify on those topics in the future.
Q: Why should readers choose this book over others already on the market? How would you differentiate your book from its competition?
Chanaka: This is the first book that combines the Microservices with NATS. Hence I think this book is unique at the time of publishing.
Q. What are the key takeaways you want readers to come away from the book with ?
Chanaka: Understanding the value of microservices based applications and start building great enterprise applications without falling into the complexity trap of the microservices approach.
Q. What advice would you give to readers learning tech? Do you have any top tips?
Chanaka: Always learn by doing. Try to share what you learn. If you don’t use it, you will forget it no matter how good you are.
Q. Do you have a blog that readers can follow?
Chanaka: Medium blog.
Q. How would you describe your author journey with Packt? Would you recommend Packt to aspiring authors?
Chanaka: It has been a great experience. The team is very helpful and I recommend authors to start their journey with Packt.
Q. Do you belong to any tech community
Chanaka: I write for DZone.
Q.What are your favorite tech journals? How do you keep yourself up to date on tech?
Chanaka: Medium, DZone, InfoQ
Q.How did you organize, plan, and prioritize your work and write the book?
Chanaka: I had a writing schedule given by Packt at the beginning of the project and I planned my work and authoring process to meet that schedule. Sometimes, I had to stay late and write during the weekends.
Q. What is that one writing tip that you found most crucial and would like to share with aspiring authors?
Chanaka: Keep the momentum going. Don’t pause your writing for more than a couple of days. It is hard to come back to the writing mode once you step out from that for a long period of time.
