HomeAuthor InterviewsInterview with Dhanushka Madushan

Interview with Dhanushka Madushan


Dhanushka Madushan is the author of Cloud Native Applications with Ballerina, we got the chance to sit down with him and find out more about his experience of writing with Packt.

Q: What is/are your specialist tech area(s)?

Dhanushka: Microservice architecture and cloud native technologies.

Q: How did you become an author for Packt? Tell us about your journey. What was your motivation for writing this book?

Dhanushka: I’m always interested in blogging and the Packt Manager reached out to me and asked me about writing a book. I believe that writing a book will make a significant impact on my career development and also leverage my knowledge and experience in technology.

Q: What kind of research did you do, and how long did you spend researching before beginning the book?

Dhanushka: I did the research for around two months before and while writing the book. I have mainly researched cloud native-related technologies, currently trending and what are upcoming trends.

Q: Did you face any challenges during the writing process? How did you overcome them?

Dhanushka: Ballerina Swan Lake release was on alpha stage when I started writing the book. Therefore there were multiple changes that happen when it comes to a beta release. It is challenging to write the book in the alpha stage since specifications frequently get changed.

Q: What’s your take on the technologies discussed in the book? Where do you see these technologies heading in the future?

Dhanushka: Mainly we discussed the microservice architecture. Service mesh and serverless are relatively new concepts that might lead to the future of cloud native technologies. I have included samples for these architectures and introduced basic concepts.

Q. Why should readers choose this book over others already on the market? How would you differentiate your book from its competition?

Dhanushka: Since Ballerina is the latest programming language, there are not many books available around Ballerina language. This book is unique since we are discussing not only Ballerina but also building cloud native with the latest technologies.

Q. What are the key takeaways you want readers to come away from the book with?

Dhanushka: After reading this book, readers should be able to understand what is cloud native, the architectural patterns used in cloud native, and how we can implement those with the Ballerina language. Here we will discuss Ballerina cloud native deployment features, Kubernetes support, observability tools, and so on.

Q. What advice would you give to readers learning tech? Do you have any top tips?

Dhanushka: Always update yourselves with the technology since it’s always changing. Connect with developer communities and get the latest update on current tech trends.

Q. Do you have a blog that readers can follow?

Dhanushka: Yes, you can find here: https://medium.com/@madushandhanushka and https://dzone.com/users/3511875/dhanushkamadushan.html

Q. Can you share any blogs, websites, and forums to help readers gain a holistic view of the tech they are learning?

Dhanushka: https://medium.com/ballerina-techblog, https://ballerina-platform.slack.com/, and https://twitter.com/ballerinalang

Q. How would you describe your author journey with Packt? Would you recommend Packt to aspiring authors?

Dhanushka: Packt team was really helpful and guided me throughout the whole process.

Q. Do you belong to any tech community groups?

Dhanushka: I belong to the Twitter dev community, DZone core, Hackernoon community, dev.to, and hashnode.

Q. What are your favorite tech journals? How do you keep yourself up to date on tech?

Dhanushka: https://hackernoon.com/, https://dzone.com/, medium, and faun.dev.

Q. How did you organize, plan, and prioritize your work and write the book?

Dhanushka: I had to balance my personal workload while writing the book. Whenever I had time, I tried to complete the book since I’m a little busy with the regular workload.

Q. What is the one writing tip that you found most crucial and would like to share with aspiring authors?

Dhanushka: Move on with trending topics.

You can find Dhanushka’s book on Amazon by following this link: Please click here

Cloud Native Applications with Ballerina – Available on Amazon.com