HomeAuthor InterviewsInterview with Michael Stack

Interview with Michael Stack

Michael Stack is the author of Event-Driven Architecture in Golang; we got the chance to sit down and find out more about his experience of writing with Packt.

Q: What are your specialist tech areas?

Michael: Golang, distributed systems/microservices architecture.

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

Michael: I read through a book titled “Microservices Patterns” and wanted to lean more about those patterns which led me to recreate the Java example application with Golang. I shared this with the Golang subreddit and got a lot of excellent feedback.

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

Michael: I had been working with event-driven architecture and microservices before I bought the catalyst book “Microservices Patterns”. For the book, I drew on that work experience and the experience from recreating the Java application in Golang.

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

Michael: It was a complex subject and I wanted to provide simple examples while also providing to the readers the same full application experience. That meant I needed to create a lot of example code which ate into the time I needed to do writing.

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

Michael: EDA is being pushed by the cloud vendors and it continues to grow. I read about some new event/message approach or library nearly every day. Using event-driven architecture is no longer an “enterprise” pattern.

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

Michael: In the book I migrate a gRPC synchronous application into an event-driven asynchronous one. As we visit new topics, we look at the pros, cons and trade-offs then apply them to the application. While not exactly a real-world application but it isn’t an over-simplified toy either.

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

Michael: EDA is comprised of several patterns. Applying them where it makes sense is the best approach.

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

Michael: Understand the individual patterns that are being presented and recognize where and when they should be applied.

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

Michael: Not at the moment.

Q: Can you share any blogs, websites, and forums to help readers gain a holistic view of the tech they are learning? What are the key takeaways you want readers to come away with from the book?

Michael: The microservices, golang, and other programming related subreddits on Reddit. Broker specific topics like Kafka, NATS, RabbitMQ, etc, are also great subreddits.

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

Michael: I started with a plan, an application design but as a typical developer does, my estimates were nearly always off and I spend way more time on that application, and the refactorings I did for each new chapter. I found the writing process to be OK, I often wanted to include tangents that would have required new diagrams and sections but needed to stick to the schedule, even if I was also often late.

Q. Do you belong to any tech community groups?

Michael: No, I do not.

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

Michael: I am constantly reading through several programming related subreddits, I read Hacker News and similar aggregate sites. I buy books on new interesting topics but most of all the way I stay up to date is I play with the new techniques, libraries and so forth by writing some code to try things out.

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

Michael: I had the plan for the chapters, and a plan for the application and how it would evolve with each new chapter. I designed the application to be like a general eCommerce application with a slight twist where bots shopped for you. It wasn’t critical to how events would be used but I felt it was more fun than the same eCommerce shopping experience retold.

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

Michael: Leave yourself a written note on where you’ve stopped or stepping away for a long period, like the end of the day. Include details on your last thought, what you wrote last and the direction you were going with it.

Q. Would you like to share your social handles? If so, please share.

Michael: LinkedIn, Github, Reddit

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

Event-Driven Architecture in Golang is available on Amazon.com