After passing the solutions architect exam I found myself thinking “ok, now what?”. I came across the #cloudresumechallenge on Reddit and got to work. Here are some thoughts on the criteria needed to complete the challenge.
HTML/CSS - I’ve always liked front-end since the myspace era. I chose a resume design template I saw on Pinterest a while back and wanted to copy it. It’s minimalist purposely since this challenge is mostly about connecting things on the backend. I did however remember to take a mobile first design approach. Added in some flexbox for good measure.
Static S3 Website/HTTPS/DNS - While studying for the solutions architect exam, I got plenty of practice deploying a static website to S3 as well as setting up HTTPS and DNS pointing. I’m thankful I got this practice because it helped a lot. And we’re moving…
Javascript- It had been a while since I dipped my toe in the waters of javascript and all it’s quirks. But here we are. I used jQuery for an API call to my API Gateway to make it a little easier
Python / Database- I read through the docs a lot for this one. Python is new to me. It seems to be a lot cleaner than Javascript. I wasn’t too much of a database pro coming into this but the docs are pretty good at explaining. The atomic counter was an interesting solution to the problem so I went with that. I’m experimenting with some other personal projects using dynamodb to get more experience working with it.
Infrastructure as code - I have a love and hate with SAM. SAM made it really easy to setup all my resources. But indentation mistakes gave me errors galore, so it took me a while but I got it. Shoutout to SAM though. It was a pain in the beginning but I expect to use it extensively in the future.
API - API Gateway was an experience. CORS gave me the biggest issue. After going through what seemed like millions of stack-overflow answers, I came to the conclusion that everyone hates CORS. Okay maybe not everyone but I'm thankful for the experience with API Gateway issues. I gained a better understanding of CORS/Proxy troubleshooting.
CI/CD(Front end) - Setting up the CI/CD backend made things a lot simpler. I found a great blog post to guide me along the path to using Github actions for my front-end by Kyle Galbraith here .
Tests and CI/CD(Back end) - This one was a little hard to setup for me. The testing was a pain, especially dealing with Pytest. But once I figured that out I was home free.
Final Thoughts - I really appreciate the #cloudresumechallenge. Especially as a newbie to AWS. It made me work hard and read a lot but the end result is a better foundational knowledge of how some key AWS services work and integrate with each other. I plan to do more experimenting and mini projects as I go on this AWS journey.
Check out my final project here
Top comments (2)
Nice work, Kevin! I hope this puts you on the path to your dream job. I noticed you linked a twitter account but haven't tweeted this to @forrestbrazeal yet. Give that a shot for some extra exposure. :)
Thanks Matt!! I’m definitely do that 😎