Whatever path you took into tech, continuous learning and development will always help keep your career moving in the right direction. Also, learning is fun! Our new Edge Computing 101 badge recognizes learners who successfully set up a Fastly Compute service that carries out a little bit of processing on a website at the network edge. The best part is that it's completely free, and you can follow the steps to achieve it inside an interactive Glitch project.
TL;DR Jump over to Glitch and earn your Edge Computing 101 badge 🎏🏅
We've spent part of 2024 building Fastly's first developer certification program. We initially trialed our new credentials as part of employee training, with coworkers from all over the company successfully completing the steps to get up to speed with the edge. We made the certification available for public use recently, with community members earning their badges and giving us valuable feedback on the experience. We're now ready for more of you to get stuck in!
Why learn about edge computing?
Edge computing is used by many of the biggest sites on the web, so these skills are valued by employers and organizations working on large scale applications with emergent technologies. Fastly Compute is an edge computing platform that enables you to make instant experiences at global scale – we've barely scratched the surface of what this technology can do. Edge engineering knowhow is still pretty rare, so if you want to get ahead of where the web is going, this is it.
📚 Learn what the edge is all about in our edge computing intro series!
The Fastly Edge Computing 101 badge
The Edge Computing 101 badge is an intro level certification – it's easy to earn! You'll submit the link to a Glitch website you remixed, and a Fastly deployed app that changes the UX for the site at the edge. You don't need any prior knowledge to complete the steps – the app uses some JavaScript, but you'll be able to grab example code from the docs inside the project. Building at the edge is a lot easier than you might think!
If you want to get into edge computing for the web more deeply, we'll have you covered later in 2025 when we extend this program to support more intermediate and advanced learning, so stay tuned if that's you.
How to earn your certification
You'll need (free) accounts on both Fastly and Glitch – if you already have them, sign in, otherwise:
To get your hands on your Edge Computing 101 badge, just remix the project and jump in:
The README will guide you through the steps:
- You'll set up your Fastly account and grab an API key
- With your API key in your Glitch project, you'll deploy an edge app to Fastly Compute
- The Glitch project contains both the website code and the edge app code, but unlike the website which you can preview immediately inside Glitch, you'll need to deploy each time you want to publish a change to your Compute code
- The
READMEincludes an example edit you'll make to extend the Compute code and deploy again to see the changes
You'll find more info in our tutorial on building your own edge computing app.
Your Compute app sits between the user and your website, so it can manipulate the request and response. The example app will enhance the behavior of the site at the network edge, personalizing the display using geolocation information. It'll pass data back to the browser with the response to the user, where the client side code will write the info into the page HTML.
You'll find the link to submit your badge application at the end of the README.
We'll aim to process your submission within 2-3 weeks.
🎓 We're using the Badgr platform for these credentials. Badgr supports Open Badges, an open source credentialing standard. This will let us build out our learning program to issue badges, and many platforms around the web integrate with Open Badges, so you can share yours on networks like LinkedIn.
How to get support
If you get stuck, want to give feedback, or just connect to others who are also learning about the edge – pop into the Fastly forum where team and community members are around to help.
🎄 Responses will be a little slower than normal over the festive season.
Ready for more?
If you're ready to extend your Compute proficiency, check out the ~fastly-compute-starter project, which does a little more processing at the edge. You can also follow along with our video and tutorial on enhancing your site UX in the Fastly docs.
Show off your badges! 📣
Don't keep quiet about your learning achievements, boast about your expertise – humility is a scam! Share your badges on your social networks, link to them in the comments, post them in the forums, tell the world!
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