How AI changed how I studied computer science 🤖

Noel Erulu — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 16:35:52 +0000

The AI advancement

Now that AI has solidified itself after a few years into the hands of pretty much everyone, it's very easy to see the pros and cons of this somewhat new technology. Back in late 2022 I remember hearing about it about a few months after taking my first computer science course. Students were starting to use it help them and teachers had been giving warnings discouraging the usage of AI on assignments and homework, etc. During this time I had been unfamiliar with it and didn't bother to use it.

Using it for the first time

However after constantly hearing about it everywhere I went I decided to use it as a search engine rather than using Google for the first time, and from then on I knew this was going to be a powerful tool. Initially using the free GPT-1 model ,I was blown away at the potential. Fast forward to my last year of senior year using it to generate math problems and programming ideas as well as some light debugging, it helped me save so much time as a student. Especially how challenging and time consuming completing a CS degree can be the usage of AI really helped me find resources and get ahead in a lot of my classes whereas I would've have struggled a lot more without it.

Being careful

Since using AI I do try to be careful not to be reliant on it. Again, since it has been improving at a rapid rate, it still manages to make mistakes and sometimes give you the wrong information depending on the prompt. So it is always important to me to rely on the foundational knowledge learned in computer science and other areas of my life where I would use it to be tempted to use it.

How I finally passed my AWS Cloud Practitioner Exam 🎉

Noel Erulu — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 05:26:14 +0000

Initial doubts 😬

At first when thinking about learning about cloud computing and AWS it was a little daunting to think about. I mean as a computer science student it can be hard to learn new things on top of your already difficult courses so, for a little bit, I was skeptical on taking on another thing to focus on. However this proved to be one of the best decisions I had made!

The road to the exam 🛣️

After spending large amounts of time researching how to study for the exam I came across a course on Udemy by the instructor Stephan Maarek and his Ultimate AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner CLF-C02 2025 course. I went ahead and purchased it during a sale and went ahead and started watching the lectures.

Roadblocks 🚧

Whilst studying I did hit lots of roadblocks such as taking time off from studying, not understanding concepts and I had kept going back and still having trouble. So after, going through and taking notes on all the lectures I went ahead and also purchased some practice exams by Neal Davis on Udemy which saved me so much hassle!

Final stretch 🎯

I had finally been making progress on my practice exams after about 2 months of studying and now decided to go all in and book a time for the exam. Coming into the exam I didn't feel prepared but I did know I had prepared too much to not fail so I went ahead and took the exam and passed with a 735. Not the highest score but hey for all the work I put in, im 100% proud of my score.

Encouragement and whats next? 🎊

I wanted to post this as encouragement that if you are having trouble with getting your AWS certification, just know there are lots of people out there in the same situation but as long as you put in the work you will pass!✅

As for what's next I hope to use these new skills to build out my cloud computing skills as well as continue diving into the large world of AWS!

DEV Community: Noel Erulu