Liang is the one of the authors of A Definitive Guide to Apache ShardingSphere. We got the chance to sit down with him and find out more about her experience of writing with Packt.
Q. What is/are your specialist tech area(s)?
Liang: Java, Database, Distributed System, Open Source, Cloud Native.
Q: How did you become an author for Packt? Tell us about your journey. What was your motivation for writing this book?
Liang: I am the founder of ShardingSphere, a large project with more than 200 modules. It is necessary to publish a book to let more programmers understand the beauty of its kernel, features and architecture.
Q: What kind of research did you do, and how long did you spend researching before beginning the book?
Liang: Seven years ago, I wrote the first line of code for ShardingSphere, and it continues to this day. I have committed more than 9000 Pull Request for this project, which contains millions of lines of code.
Q: Did you face any challenges during the writing process? How did you overcome them?
Liang: Not too bad for me. I am very familiar with this project and have some writing experience. The first chapter is the most important, both the content and the author’s confidence. It is best to finish the first chapter as soon as possible and keep writing. English expression issues. But to burden our editors!
Q. What’s your take on the technologies discussed in the book? Where do you see these technologies heading in the future?
Liang: Fragmentation is the trend of database in the future. Database Plus is the design philosophy of ShardingSphere. It will play an important role in the future and thrive under the architecture concept of link, enhancement and pluggable.
Q: Why should readers choose this book over others already on the market? How would you differentiate your book from its competition?
Liang: This book is written by the founder team of the project. This is the first book to systematically introduce ShardingSphere, which will disclose a large number of design details and best practices.
Q: What advice would you give to readers learning tech? Do you have any top tips?
Liang: Understanding design concepts is a top priority, take the appropriate features in the business scenario as needed, and use code example part of book as reference when coding lastly.
Q. What are the key takeaways you want readers to come away from the book with?
Liang: The design philosophy of Database Plus, the design concept of data divide and governance, and the perfect data sharding solution.
Q. Can you share any blogs, websites and forums to help readers gain a holistic view of the tech they are learning?
Liang: The official website(https://shardingsphere.apache.org/) is necessary, and there is commercial company – SphereEx(https://www.sphere-ex.com/) which provides lots of user cases.
Q. Do you have a blog that readers can follow?
Liang: My GitHub page: https://github.com/terrymanu
Q. How would you describe your author journey with Packt? Would you recommend Packt to aspiring authors?
Liang: Of course I will. Packt is very professional. The progress of books is well controlled, the rhythm is stable, and the quality is strictly controlled. A good book is closely related to these things.
Q. What are your favorite tech journals? How do you keep yourself up to date on tech?
Liang: I prefer the papers of VLDB, SIGMOD and ICDE.
Q. How did you organize, plan, and prioritize your work and write the book?
Liang: ShardingSphere is My Job. My company is using ShardingSphere to do the enterprise and SaaS products. Besides, it is my job to make the community more active.
Q. What is that one writing tip that you found most crucial and would like to share with aspiring authors?
Liang: I have always believed that code is same with article. I write according to the same idea of coding, from the overall structure design to the improvement of every detail. What I can share with aspiring authors are that programing thinking is the best advantage of engineers,
please zoom in our advantages.
Q. Do you belong to any tech community groups?
Liang: Yes, I belong to Apache Software Foundation, I am the member of ASF, and the PMC Chair of Apache ShardingSphere.
Q. Would you like to share your social handles? If so, please share.
Liang: https://github.com/terrymanu
You can find Liang’s book on Amazon by following this link: Please click here.
