Monthly summary #2 – July 2024
We are in the middle of the summer. Sunny sky, temperature is high, and everyone dreams of vacation. On the other hand, I am not stopping. This is my second monthly summary entry. Let’s go!
Monthly summary
A lot has happened during this month. I’m reading my weekly summaries now, and I am genuinely surprised, how much I have achieved. Most of the work (of course) was dedicated to AWS Associate Dev certification. I worked with UDEMY course for it (by Stephane Maarek) – over 30 hours of recordings, quizzes and mock exams. For the time being I have over 750 flashcards dedicated to it. And yet, I still feel like I’m just scratching the surface. Cloud in itself is a huge area. There is no way to “know it”. The more I learn, the more I realize it.
The sad reality is that I have missed my spot in a way. It seems that during the summer, all the nearby certification centers are not working. As I wanted to pass the exam at the on-site provider – I hit a wall. For the time being then, my AWS exam is scheduled for the 3rd of September. I prefer to see it as an opportunity to learn more. Anyways, if anything goes wrong – there is free retake included in the exam fee already 😉
Besides AWS I finished Python 101, with doing tens of simple code katas with this language. I am still far away from writing idiomatic Python on the spot. However, I got some foundation on which I plan to build in the future.
The same goes for Kafka – finished a simple UDEMY course (also by Stephane Maarek), and created ANKI deck for it. Kafka is a go-to solution when it comes to pub/sub architecture, so gaining some familiarity with it is quite important. Not only to add new tool to my toolbox, but also to gain some architecture-related knowledge.
Speaking of certifications – to balance lots of AWS knowledge, I have opened a second stream, dedicated to passing the KCNA exam. It is an entry-level cloud-native certification that concentrates on the basics of Kubernetes, Docker and a lot of other cloud solutions and concepts. Here, I am willing to follow the same path that I went with AWS – start small, and build on that. So far it is going great – and the James Spurin course that I’m following is great. I plan to finish it in a couple of days. For my preparation I have also read the “Kubernetes and Cloud Native Associate Study Guide” book. Nothing special I would say, did not gain some special knowledge here, but it was a nice wrap-up before the course.
When it comes to reading, I have also read a couple of other books – Kleppmann book, with a follow up in “Mastering API Architecture”. To go a little bit higher – already read “Systems Design Interview part 1”, and the second part is on my current reading list.
To wrap things up, I did not forget about the pure basics. Therefore, a series of short entries in the “Back to Basics” category is a walking proof of that. Sometimes I get a feeling that I lack knowledge in the areas that I should “just know”. I dedicate this blog series to covering the basics. BigO notation, and TPC/IP concepts are so far the subjects covered. More to come for sure.
What’s next?
That wraps-up monthly summary for July 2024. As usual, below you can find links to the specific weeks’ summaries. The plan for the upcoming month is to wrap-up with AWS Dev cert preparation, and the same goes for KCNA. I also plan to write some summary articles in the #SeniorDevRevamp about the current state of things in Java (GC article is in the making). As it’s summer-time, I am planning two weeks in the mountains. I still will be learning there, but at a much slower pace. ANKI just to keep me in the loop, and I already got some not-that-technical-IT-books that I plan to read. Reviews will follow for sure 😉
Weekly summaries
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