Contributor spotlight: Isuru Weerarathna

For an open-source project, the community plays a major role in building innovative products. No matter the form the contribution takes, feedback, code contribution, bug reports, or word of mouth, Mockoon wouldn't be what it has become without all of you. We started this series of interviews to put some more light on the contributors who spent time crafting features or fixing bugs for the benefit of all. Today, we are talking with Isuru Weerarathna, who shares his enthusiasm for contributing to and using Mockoon.

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 Can you introduce yourself and your background in software development, your passions or hobbies?

Hi, my name is Isuru Weerarathna (@isuru89). I am a full-stack developer with 10+ years of experience in the software industry. I love finding software solutions for business problems. I have worked in different dynamic environments, from startups to big corporations.
I am passionate about solving problems through design and coding.
Outside those brain-exhausting activities, I also cook, play casual computer games, and read novels during my free time.

 How long have you been using Mockoon? Are there any particular contributions you've made that you'd like to emphasize or showcase?

About two or three years ago, I (including our previous team) started using Mockoon in our day-to-day activities. I have contributed to the callback feature and currently work on the WebSockets implementation in Mockoon.

 What inspired you to contribute to a project like Mockoon and open-source in general?

I identified that Mockoon has almost all the capabilities (except for a few) to mock API requirements that I have worked on, usually in our integration tests. After identifying those missing capabilities, I realized that I could contribute to those with my knowledge and experience gathered so far, and that it would benefit other people around the world.

 How do you balance your contributions with other commitments?

I am trying to contribute to open-source projects whenever I have time. It's not easy to find the balance between being an employee in a company versus a passionate individual contributor, but I am managing.

 If it’s part of your work, how did you manage to get your employer's approval for contributing to open-source projects, and what's the organizational setup for these contributions?

In my experience, the current team management is very open and friendly to contributing towards open-source for the benefit of everyone. In particular, the feature we required was missing, which meant it could be missing for other people as well. Rather than making it "proprietary" or "licensed", our current management encouraged us to open-source those solutions.

 What general advice would you give to someone interested in contributing to open-source projects?

Contributing is a great way to learn about coding but also about understanding requirements, communication skills, documentation skills, and general autonomy.

 Has your involvement with open source contributed to your growth as a developer or your career?

Absolutely. As I said earlier, I learned a lot not only about coding but also other aspects like changing requirements, troubleshooting, and understanding codebases and development styles.

 What makes Mockoon unique compared to other API mocking tools? Can you share some key features or functionalities that you find particularly useful?

It's fast and reliable, with a very intuitive UI/UX. The CLI interface helps in automated deployments.

 Have you integrated Mockoon into any specific projects or workflows, and if so, how has it improved or streamlined those processes?

We are about to. We have a case of not being able to mock some of the third-party APIs for our end-to-end (E2E) tests because those vendors don’t provide sandbox environments, or even if they provide them, they don’t cover all the cases we want. Also, sometimes those vendors charge for sandbox usage as well, which is not ideal for our extensive test suites. So, Mockoon fills this gap and acts as a mock API for those impossible scenarios.

 What are your favorite tools or resources for software development outside of Mockoon?

Github 🙂

 Is there anything else you'd like to share with the Mockoon community, a personal project or an interesting read?

I am also currently maintaining one popular Moodle plugin called Event Reminders. It automates sending reminders for calendar events. I have been maintaining this plugin for more than ten years. Currently, it is positioned 3rd in terms of most loved Local plugins.

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We thank Isuru for sharing his journey with us. We are grateful he chose to dedicate his time and talent to improving projects like Mockoon, making it an indispensable tool for developers worldwide.

More interviews are in the pipeline. Be sure not to miss any by subscribing to our newsletter or joining our Discord server. Happy mocking!