So yeah… I passed the AWS Developer Associate exam yesterday and got my second AWS Associate certificate. It all happened within a year, having passed the AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam back in Apr this year (see post).

There is no particular incentive to getting myself certified other than the fact that my current role is more of a developer role. I primarily work with AWS serverless resources and the DVA certificate goes quite well with my role. Besides that, I learned about other resources that could help to enhance the pipelines I’m developing for the chatbot such as using AWS X-ray to enhance tracing and logging capability.

Despite that, it was not an easy task as I took time off here and there in the past 3-4 months as I would get busy with work on and off.

I learned from my previous AWS preparation exercise that I am not a video person. I could not stand watching videos explaining the details. Instead, I simply read the Tutorial Dojo notes and went straight for the exam practices. The practice sets do offer explanation after attempting each question and that helps a lot.

This was exactly how I studied back in school as well - dive straight to the exercises and search for relevant information online. It is a lot easier now with AI tools like ChatGPT or Perplexity.

However, I do acknowledge certain flaws in my study style. The practice sets could only teach you so much and there are definitely things that I am not aware of but it is not a big issue at the moment. It has formed a foundation and I now know how to resolve. As I get more hands on experience, I would start to learn from my mistakes.

Now I would want to take a short break given that the holidays season is here. Once the season is over, I’ll start to prepare for the AWS Machine Learning Specialty exam, just as mentioned in my previous post.