Contributor spotlight: Maurice Ackel
We continue our series of interviews with Mockoon's open-source contributors with Maurice Ackel, Full Stack Developer at Netlight.
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 Maurice Ackel, who shares his enthusiasm for contributing to and using Mockoon.
Can you introduce yourself and your background in software development, your passions or hobbies?
Hej 👋I’m Maurice (@mauriceackel), and I’m passionate about building software and sharing knowledge, but you will also find me in the mountains either riding the motorbike or skiing 😉. I recall learning about programming back when I was a kid by watching YouTube videos and trying to recreate what was happening. This got me hooked, and to this day, I enjoy developing software and building creative solutions at the IT Consultancy Netlight, where I work as a Senior Consultant.
I love contributing to open-source projects. Something about a bunch of strangers coming together to build amazing software is so fascinating to me.
How long have you been using Mockoon? Are there any particular contributions you've made that you'd like to emphasize or showcase?
My first touchpoint with Mockoon was at university back in 2020. I worked as a research assistant and needed a quick and easy way to spin up mock APIs. So naturally, Mockoon was the perfect fit. However, when I attempted to automate my solution, I realized that there was no way to run Mockoon headlessly as a CLI. That’s why, after going through some tickets and the code on GitHub, I started building the first, though unofficial, Mockoon CLI as a fork of the project. Later, I supported the development of the official Mockoon CLI, and I’m pleased to see that the Docker image has already been pulled over 3 million times!
💡 Maurice worked on many improvements for the CLI and notably added Docker support. The Docker image has now been downloaded 3 million times!
What inspired you to contribute to a project like Mockoon and open-source in general?
I love contributing to open-source projects as I enjoy the community character behind them. Something about a bunch of strangers coming together to build amazing software is so fascinating to me. I’ve even built great friendships that emerged from a simple contribution to an open-source project.
How do you balance your contributions with other commitments? Are your open-source contributions part of your work (as an employee)?
At Netlight, we have a passion for sharing knowledge and creating together, as we believe this is how we can unleash the full potential in our clients but also in ourselves. So naturally, whenever a contribution to an open-source project can benefit my delivery for the client or allows me to gain more knowledge in a certain area of interest, I dive right into it. I’m lucky enough to have turned my hobby into my job, which is why I enjoy working on passion projects even outside of work.
I believe that contributing to open-source projects is a great way to learn new skills and engage in fun challenges.
What general advice would you give to someone interested in contributing to open-source projects?
If you want to contribute something specific to a project, I believe a great starting point is to go over the tickets in the repository to see if there already exist previous or ongoing discussions about the topic. If that’s not the case, it’s worthwhile to start your contribution journey by creating a ticket to discuss your idea with maintainers, contributors, and users. Also, reading the existing code is a nice way to familiarize yourself with the coding style and standards of the project. In the end, just go for it and try it out – it’s a great learning opportunity!
Has your involvement with open source contributed to your growth as a developer or your career?
Open-source projects have contributed a lot to my growth and career as a developer. For example, my first touchpoints with React came from an open-source project (https://github.com/option26/quarantine-hero), to which I started contributing before I even knew how it actually worked. Today, React is my go-to front-end framework, and I’ve now become proficient in it. I love looking back and seeing my learning journey that kicked off with this one project. I believe that contributing to open-source projects is a great way to learn new skills and engage in fun challenges.
What makes Mockoon unique compared to other API mocking tools? Can you share some key features or functionalities that you find particularly useful?
I like the simplicity and ease of use of Mockoon. In my opinion, Mockoon’s best feature is its UI – it’s very intuitive, which allows me to do fast iterations and quickly adapt to different scenarios. I like how you can take the environment files and simply use them in the CLI if needed. Also, I love that the project is open-source and actively promotes an open community.
Have you integrated Mockoon into any specific projects or workflows, and if so, how has it improved or streamlined those processes?
In a recent assignment, we worked with a SaaS solution that we customized to interact with some APIs. However, those APIs were not developed yet, so we ended up using Mockoon locally with ngrok to test out several success and error cases. This allowed us to speed up the customization of the SaaS tool a lot.
What are your favorite tools or resources for software development outside of Mockoon?
I use VS Code as my daily driver because I love the flexibility that extensions can give you. Pair this with devcontainers and you can build amazing, specialized, yet isolated development environments. Also, I want to advocate for using GitHub issues as an extension to other platforms like Stackoverflow or ChatGPT. Oftentimes, you’re not the first person with a specific issue and, if the tool you are using is open-source, the community perhaps already raised it and proposed a solution or workaround (always check closed tickets, too).
Is there anything else you'd like to share with the Mockoon community, a personal project or an interesting read?
As I mentioned, I’m passionate about knowledge sharing, and so is my employer, Netlight. On EDGEx, we’ve built a platform for cross-network knowledge sharing that I can highly recommend for finding great talks about different aspects of tech!
We thank Maurice 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!