The AWS Developer certification is one of the less difficult associate certification to achieve. It is aimed at making you able to benefit from the main AWS Cloud services to build scalable and resilient applications. If you already have a Solution Architect Associate certification, you can achieve this one in few days. If it is your first certification, here is my path to the success !
Training class with an AAI : Amazon Authorized Instructor
If you have access to an official training with an Amazon Authorized Instructor, it can be a real booster for your learning. I must admit that I'm partial since I'm an AAI myself. But I've trained more than hundred of people and they used to have between 45% and 75% of good answer on their first training exam just after the training courses (reminder : the passing score is 72%). Although it's not enough by itself, the time investment is worth the result and it can shorten your self-training next phase.
Self-training with a learning platform
Many people have their own preferences regarding the training platform they use to like. I'll use another approach depending on your budget. Here are my favorite learning platform regarding this certification :
- Adrian Cantrill courses are by far my favorite. You can buy the developer course for 48$. The particularity of this course is that it goes way further than the certification and it's preparing you to be able to work on AWS development with a strong knowledge. It's also a very good breeding ground for the DevOps professional certification.
- Cloud Academy is my goto platform when I want to quickly prepare myself because you can get 1 month access for 40$ with video courses, labs to practice, section exams and a real-world training exam example with a good focus on the certification requirements.
For my AWS Developer associate certification, I used Cloud Academy. The learning path estimated time is around 42h but don't be afraid : there is only around 12 video sections. The rest is mainly composed of labs that can be achieved way faster than the indicated time. Some of them can be skipped. I spent only 13 hours of time in this path.
Training exams
Once you got an overall knowledge after following the training courses, you will have to train yourself through practice exams. You'll have to familiarize yourself with the typology of the questions, answers and time management. I recommend Whizlabs because their practice exams are very similar to the real ones. Some of them explore some concepts you may not have seen in the training courses. This is why you should do few practice exams, even if you quickly reach a good score (more than 72%). Personally, I passed through 3 practice exams before registering to the real exam.
I succeeded at the first try with 83%. It's not a big score and I don't pretend to be a genius. But it's enough.
My advices for the exam
Here is a list of advices that can be very useful the D-Day :
- Don't loose too much time training aiming to reach the perfect score : no one will ever care about your score.
- When you're not sure to have the good answer(s), try to eliminate the wrong one(s).
- Try to find the keywords in the question. Ex : questions about Kinesis are often coupled with the keyword "real-time"
- Try not to spend more than 2min per question.
- Don't overthink : there is no trap.
- Answer only with your knowledge : if you worked enough, it will be enough. If you didn't, trying to guess won't help you.
- Don't stress if you dont have the direct answer to the first questions, the next and last ones will probably be less complicated.
- Not every answer have the same impact on your score. So don't discourage yourself if you have the feeling that you did too much wrong answers.
- Don't preempt your result. I passed 7 exams and 6 times I was pretty sure that I will fail in the middle of the exam. It wasn't the case.
Useful information
Here is a recap of useful information about this certification :
Duration : 130min
Cost : 150$
Number of questions : 65
Average passing score : 72%
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