Hamida Rebai Trabelsi is the author of ‘A Developer’s Guide to Cloud Apps Using Microsoft Azure‘, we got the chance to sit down and find out more about her experience of writing with Packt.
Q: What are your specialist tech areas?
Hamida: Software development, Cloud, architecture
Q: How did you become an author for Packt? Tell us about your journey. What was your motivation for writing this book?
Hamida: I was thinking about writing my first book from a long time, but I wasn’t sure that I can have time to do it, when I get my baby girl, I was in maternity leave, I decided to start this new experience in my career to share my knowledge, I like reading books produced by Packt so I decided to send a book proposal to Packt.
Q: What kind of research did you do, and how long did you spend researching before beginning the book?
Hamida: I made research in Microsoft documentation and in different book to be able to see if what I’m sharing will be unique and will help developers and architects to start with Azure and the different services according to their use cases.
Q: Did you face any challenges during the writing process? How did you overcome them?
Hamida: It is my first book, I thought that it is similar to writing blogs and articles but it wasn’t easy because I was missing time to deliver every chapter. Sometimes, I wasn’t able to keep writing and I give up but with the support of the editorial team, I tried to keep working on the book.
Q: What’s your take on the technologies discussed in the book? Where do you see these technologies heading in the future?
Hamida: The technologies used in this book present the future because there are always updates and new features
Q: Why should readers choose this book over others already on the market? How would you differentiate your book from its competition?
Hamida: This book will include some use cases to help the reader to understand the choice of every cloud service according to the architecture and we have a part related to the CI /CD (DevOps for developers) as an introduction to start.
Q: What are the key takeaways you want readers to come away with from the book?
Hamida: By the end of this book, you will know how to decide about patterns, technologies for any use case, deploy and ensure the Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery deployment using Azure DevOps.
Q. What advice would you give to readers learning tech? Do you have any top tips?
Hamida: I advise them to keep learning because technologies are changing and we need to keep an eye on the new patterns and new technologies.
Q. Do you have a blog that readers can follow?
Hamida: https://didourebai.medium.com/
Q. Can you share any blogs, websites and forums to help readers gain a holistic view of the tech they are learning?
Hamida: I advise them to use Microsoft technologies and follow my blog
Q. How would you describe your author’s journey with Packt? Would you recommend Packt to aspiring authors?
Hamida: In the beginning, I was in a maternity leave, so I write any time in the day because I take care of my baby girl, after, I planned a fixed number of hours: 4 hours by day sometimes more if I wasn’t able to finish the chapter in time. I recommend Packt for aspiring authors
Q. Do you belong to any Tech Communities?
Hamida: I’m Microsoft MVP so Microsoft community, I belong also to Microsoft Azure Quebec community group and the Tunisian .NET community group that I lead.
Q. What are your favorite tech journals? How do you keep yourself up to date on tech?
Hamida: CODE Magazine, MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW, Programmez (french edition), I booked two hours every day to learn after I try to share that in my blog.
Q. How did you organize, plan, and prioritize your work and write the book?
Hamida: I’m a mother and a wife, I have more responsibilities to manage during the day because I’m working as Senior Advisor, Information and Solution Integration Architect in Revenu Quebec, I planned a fixed number of hours at night to be able to write the book.
Q. What is that one writing tip that you found most crucial and would like to share with aspiring authors?
Hamida: Make a plan to write your book to be more organized and keep searching about the latest technologies
You can find Glen’s book on Amazon by following this link: Please click here
