Vivekanandan SS is the authors of The Ultimate Guide to Snowpark. We got the chance to sit down with him and find out more about his experience of writing with Packt.
Q: What is the name of your book?
Vivek: The Ultimate Guide to Snowpark
Q: What are your specialist tech areas?
Vivek: I am a seasoned Data Scientist and specialize in machine learning and Gen AI
Q: How did you become an author for Packt? Tell us about your journey. What was your motivation for writing this book?
Vivek: I have written a lot of blogs and contributed to many publications so writing a book falls in my wheelhouse. Shankar basically dragged me into the gig and since the topic is my domain, I decided to roll with it.
Q: What kind of research did you do, and how long did you spend researching before beginning the book?
Vivek: Since the feature was new and evolving, we relayed a lot on Snowflake blogs and demo Videos. We had to try out a lot of things in preview before actually writing about it.
Q: Did you face any challenges during the writing process? How did you overcome them?
Vivek: Where do I start? The whole process has been personally challenging and also rewarding for me. Not to mention the difficulty in writing a book, but personally I have gone through a lot in the process.This book journey is deeply emotional for me. Midway through writing, my health took a severe downturn, leading to a necessary kidney transplant surgery. After five long years, I finally found a donor. I dedicated my recovery time to finishing the book, and by its publication, I had regained my health and spirit
Q: What’s your take on the technologies discussed in the book? Where do you see these technologies heading in the future?
Vivek: For a Python lover and Data Scientists like me where SQL is just not enough, Snowpark provides a means to run Python and other advanced workloads inside Snowflake. I can now bring my Apps to my data that is within Snowflake. With Gen AI and LLMs taking over the world, Snowpark is going to play a key role in implementing AI workloads in Snowflake especially with the Container Services.
Q: Why should readers choose this book over others already on the market? How would you differentiate your book from its competition?
Vivek: There is no other book out there about Snowpark like this one. As a Data Scientist and once a Snowflake novice myself, I would have wanted a book not just with theory but actual examples and code that I can get my hands on. Each of the Chapters are carefully crafted with code examples. This is a book for the Developers written by two developers.
Q: What are the key takeaways you want readers to come away with from the book?
Vivek: Snowpark is a great platform for developers to build machine learning models and Data Applications. With the Python library, it becomes even easier to do advanced analytics with Snowpark using Python. The Snowpark Container Services enables the deployment of apps and LLMs within the AI Data Cloud.
Q. What advice would you give to readers jumping into this technology? Do you have any top tips?
Vivek: I alway believe learning is better when practiced. Coming from a non IT background myself, I learned the majority of my programming skills by practice. Create a Git repository and start building sample projects to learn skills and hone them.
Q. Do you have a blog that readers can follow?
Vivek: I write blogs for a lot of publications. My blogs can be found at https://viveksrinivasans.com
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?
Vivek: I love the Analytics Vidya blogs https://www.analyticsvidhya.com/blog
Q. How would you describe your author’s journey with Packt? Would you recommend Packt to aspiring authors?
Vivek:Packt has been great to work with. They provided support as we completed through the chapters and also were very flexible to work with my schedule as I was going through the health challenges. I couldn’t have asked for better support from a publisher.
Q. Do you belong to any tech community groups?
Vivek: I write for a lot of publications and online blogs like Analytics Vidhya. I am active with the Data Science, GenAI and startups community groups.
Q. What are your favorite tech journals? How do you keep yourself up to date on tech?
Vivek: I follow wired and Analytics Vidya
Q. How did you organize, plan, and prioritize your work and write the book?
Vivek: It was a little chaotic at the beginning but once we fit into the habit of writing, we made it a point to work on it daily. We also followed a divide and conquer approach between Chapters writing them in parallel.
Q. What is that one writing tip that you found most crucial and would like to share with aspiring authors?
Vivek: Start with the Structure and Outline with points on what you are going to write so you can streamline your thoughts easier and would not miss any information to write.
Q. Would you like to share your social handles? If so, please share.
Vivek: Website, LinkedIn, Medium and Github.
