Jichen Li is the author of Extending and Modifying LAMMPS – Writing Your Own Source Code, 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)?
Jichen: Physical Chemistry
Q: How did you become an author for Packt? Tell us about your journey. What was your motivation for writing this book?
Jichen: I was invited by Dr.Shafat as a co-author to write this book because I used to write tutorials of LAMMPS on my own website.
Q: What kind of research did you do, and how long did you spend researching before beginning the book?
Jichen: I used to study in polymer physics for three years using LAMMPS.
Q: Did you face any challenges during the writing process? How did you overcome them?
Jichen: Yes. It is very easy to understand a problem, but it isn’t easy to write it down for others to understand. I think only by explaining a problem to others can you really understand it.
Q: What’s your take on the technologies discussed in the book? Where do you see these technologies heading in the future?
Jichen: With the rapid development of computer computing power, simulations will become as important as traditional experiments to verify the theory’s importance. Therefore, the existing software functions are difficult to meet the rapidly increasing demand, and researchers will definitely need to modify it themselves to satisfy their needs.
Q: Why should readers choose this book over others already on the market? How would you differentiate your book from its competition?
Jichen: This book is the only book in the market that explains how to modify the source code of LAMMPS. It starts from explaining the source code, and guides you a little bit to understand the working principle of LAMMPS, and finally uses a few examples to show how to customize your own features. Even a beginner in programming without complex engineering experience can understand how to modify this software.
Q. What are the key takeaways you want readers to come away from the book with?
Jichen: You can modify other molecular dynamics calculation software by analogy.
Q. What advice would you give to readers learning tech? Do you have any top tips?
Jichen: This is a very complicated software, so be patient, read line by line, try and debug constantly.
Q. Do you have a blog that readers can follow?
Jichen: Yes, visit the following page: https://lammps.org.cn/
Q. Can you share any blogs, websites and forums to help readers gain a holistic view of the tech they are learning?
Jichen: http://www.hypermd.wordpress.com/
Q. How would you describe your author journey with Packt? Would you recommend Packt to aspiring authors?
Jichen: Yes, the cooperation with PACKT is very pleasant. Editors are very responsible and professional.
Q. Do you belong to any tech community groups?
Jichen: I’ve joined Packt Community
You can find Jichen’s book on Amazon by following this link: Please click here
