Written by 2024-09-03

How did I pass AWS Developer Associate exam?

AWS Article

AWS Developer Associate finally passed! Preparations took me some time, and that’s why I want to share my way in order to support everyone that will try to do the same. Let’s go.

Why AWS Developer Associate?

In the area of AWS I have started small – with Cloud Practitioner exam. I did not want to rush things, and steady progress was more important to me, than just ‘getting the cert’. After getting the first certificate, I have embarked on the more ambitious journey – Developer Associate one. In general, it is intended for people, who were supposed to already have some level of AWS experience. I had it – but mostly in the “read-only” mode – without the actual application development for the cloud specifically. Studying for the certificate was my way of changing that, at least in the home-study environment.

What I used for studying?

My preparations started almost right away after I passed the Cloud Practitioner exam. You can follow my progress with weekly summaries  that I have posted in July and August. To get the overall picture, I have started with an over 30 hour long UDEMY course by Stephane Maarek. Looking back, I think it served well as an introductory course, setting a stage for what is required, and how all those services work and interact with each other.

The only problem I have with this course, is that it is a mixture of lessons that are being reused in other courses (e.g. for solutions architect one). That’s not that much of a problem. The main problem lies in its “freshness”. In several cases we get screens/walkthroughs that still use the old AWS console UI. AFAIR – it was changed somewhere around 2020-2021! The course says it is being updated in the specific sections to catch up with the most recent changes, but I don’t have a feeling that it is the main point of interest for the author.

As I’ve said – ss a foundation it served well – but obviously it was not enough. I have continued with more in-depth materials. Here, I can recommend free DigitalCloud cheat sheets – they are quite detailed, in the “almost-like-question-answer” style. A lot of flashcards were created by me based on that cheat-sheet. Additionally, I have purchased a study book by TutorialsDojo. And that was a bull’s eye! Almost two hundred pages, describing and explaining every service that may be in the scope for the exam. Tens of new flashcards created.

Testing, testing, testing

Once all that preparation, and studying were done – I started with mock tests. I must be honest – using them was one of the best decisions in my preparation. The ones authored by the aforementioned Stephane Maarek on UDEMY – they were hard and gave me a lot of additional knowledge. However, same as with the course, they were outdated in several areas (mentioning classic load balancer, questions about eventual consistency in S3 which is long gone…). I don’t recommend them, unless you get them cheap, and you treat them with a healthy dose of suspicion. 

Again – in the area of mock tests, TutorialsDojo did a fantastic job. Six, high-quality (and really hard) exams, with detailed explanations, links, diagrams, you name it. It seems that a lot of people share the same feeling about them as I do. For any future certs I would like to get, TutorialsDojo will be my first go-to place. I have also read many favorable statements about WhizzLabs. I remember using their materials back in the day, as I was preparing for my Java certification (gosh, something like 15 years ago), and I was very satisfied with them. 

Final list of sources I have used

The result of using all the above is my ANKI flashcards deck. During all the preparation, it grew to be exactly 999  cards one. This is a snapshot of the custom-repetition mode, that I used the day before my exam. It took me a couple of hours to finish.

What’s next after AWS Developer Associate?

I have to rest for some time, that’s for sure. I am writing these words at the beginning of September 2024, and I’m planning over 500km trekking journey in the Polish mountains. When it comes to cloud-related certifications and knowledge gain I am putting it on hold for the time being. I need to get more hands-on experience, and then, I will decide how to proceed further.

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