Introduction
AWS (Amazon Web Services) offers 200+ services these days. That's a lot of names to keep straight.
And there's one thing that trips up everyone, beginners included. You get used to just saying "Route 53" out loud, and then when you're writing documentation you suddenly blank on the official name: is it "AWS Route 53" or "Amazon Route 53"?
Right?
AWS or Amazon
I figured turning that everyday confusion into a game could be fun, so I looked around for something similar. There are quizzes that show a service icon and ask you to name it, and quizzes that describe a service and ask you to pick the name — but nothing focused purely on "is it AWS or Amazon?"
Naming the full service correctly is hard for beginners, but just picking the prefix felt like something anyone could enjoy.
These days, if you have an idea, AI makes it quick to build. So I sketched out the rules for the game right away.
By the way, the distinction between the two prefixes is explained in plenty of places, but roughly:
- Amazon: standalone services that work on their own
- AWS: utility services typically used by other services
What I built
Here's what I ended up with. It's playable entirely in the browser.
It's hosted on GitHub Pages, and the source code is here.
Designing the game
I wanted something simple: a two-choice format you can breeze through. So I built it to pull 20 random questions from a dataset of AWS service info.
Beyond just picking an answer, each question shows a short explanation of the service and a link to the official docs, so you can actually learn something along the way.
Choosing where to host it
Since the game is just plain JavaScript and a single HTML file, GitHub Pages was the obvious choice for hosting.
Improving the UI
In the first version, the "Next" button appeared at the bottom of the screen after you answered. That worked, but it was too far from the answer choices, and on mobile it made moving to the next question clunky.
So I compared a few design options.
I also had a rank displayed based on your score, but it wasn't obvious whether a given rank was good or bad, so I simplified it to a plain evaluation instead.
Wrapping up
That's the story behind building "AWS or Amazon Quiz" and what I paid attention to along the way.
If you play it and catch yourself thinking "wait, I thought that one was Amazon" — that's a sign the naming conventions are starting to stick.
If you enjoyed it, a star on GitHub would mean a lot.
Bug reports and corrections (like "this service's description is wrong") are welcome via Issues or comments — the service descriptions were generated by AI since there are so many of them, so a few may not be entirely accurate.
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