How does one manage to simplify the complexities of the NAT Gateway? In this episode of "Screaming in the Cloud," Corey Quinn interviews Malith Rajapakse, a DevOps engineer who has recently received acclaim for his blog post discussing the Managed NAT Gateway. Where AWS lacks in its documentation, Malith is a NATural at breaking things down. He’s so great at it that Corey had to invite him on the show! Malith shares the story behind his popular post, his creative process, and his use of interactive diagrams and engaging content. He and Corey also discuss the challenges of documentation and making technical subjects more appealing. Thankfully, Malith has already done that in written form, so enjoy this episode as he speaks it into the world!

Show Highlights

(0:00) Intro

(1:24) The Duckbill Group sponsor read

(1:58) Malith's background before his blog post 

(4:21) Why Malith wrote about the Managed NAT Gateway

(5:38) Corey's problems with Managed NAT Gateway and why Malith's blog post impressed him

(10:05) The interactive elements of Malith's blog post and how they were made

(12:21) Maltih's front-end experience

(14:47) Transitioning from front-end to DevOps through JavaScript

(16:20) The juxtaposition of Malith's blog post vs. AWS's official documentation

(18:05) How AWS's documentation of the managed NAT gateway isn't user-friendly

(22:27) Why Malith went all out for his first blog post

(23:17) Corey's constructive feedback for Malith

(26:05) Where you can find more from Malith

About Malith Rajapakse

Malith is a Devops engineer creating visualisations at https://malithr.com/.

Links

• Malith’s blog: https://malithr.com/
• Interactive AWS NAT Gateway: https://malithr.com/aws/natgateway/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/malith-rajapakse/
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/malithr.com
• Twitter: https://x.com/malithraj
• Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/user/mdilraj/
• Sam Rose’s blog: https://samwho.dev/
• Benjamin Dicken’s blog post on IO devices and latency: https://planetscale.com/blog/io-devices-and-latency
• Josh W Comeau’s blog: https://www.joshwcomeau.com/
• Killed By Google: https://killedbygoogle.com/

Sponsor

The Duckbill Group: duckbillgroup.com