AWS Associate Developer

Hey guys,

I work in Accenture and got this wonderful opportunity to take up AWS Developer Associate Exam. I had exactly 21 days in my hands to prepare for this exam as after that I had to deal with a heavy workload. I set my goals accordingly.

First was to purchase the course where the instructor was Stephane Maarek. Wonderfully crafted course. I couldn't be more grateful to him and his teaching skills.

After that I purchased the practice papers which were again , available on Udemy. 

I used to usually prepare for this exam after my work timings. It used to be damn hectic yet exciting. 

The portion was vast. Hence I invested my weekends in finishing the course and getting my concepts clarified. 

The final week was completely devoted towards paper solving and improving each day! 

Finally, on the previous day of my exam I revised everything again which was very helpful as it was a quick lookup. I highly recommend that!

I answered my exam and was proud to see the results. If you really wish for something and give your best to achieve it then nobody can stop you. 

Go for it. Ace it!

Background:

I had no knowledge of AWS's cloud offerings or services. But I did understand the need of their services. I had been studying programming for about a year, proficient in python, java, and javaScript.

Pre-requisites:

required: Working with REST API's on the backend and communicating with a database

^ Having hands on experience developing full stack applications is helpful in the learning process and puts into perspective the importance of everything you are learning.

The Strat:

I studied about 1-2 (max 3) sections everyday of Stephane Maarek's Udemy Course, with there being about 30 sections, it took about 15-16 days to complete his lecture series.

Then I studied Stephane Maarek's AWS Developers - Associate Practice Exams:

udemy.com

I studied for 3-4 days, completing 4-5 practices tests.

It took me on average 1 hours and 33 minutes to complete a test. And it took me 2-3 (Max 4) hours per test to review.

Advice:

Take minimum 4 practice tests, review every question and learn exactly why each multiple choice option is either correct or wrong.

On the practice tests I scored: 63%, 63%, 73%, 80% (I took a 5th test, but I don't remember the score for it)

Test Day (1 day)

try to relax, be comfortable, and pace yourself

I took the test and was not sure how well I did, there were quite a few tough questions, luckily deductive reasoning and tirelessly studying paid off. I passed with a score of 917/1000

Friendly Advice:

If you fail on your first try, don't worry it's okay, just keep practicing, you've made it this far because your persistence and effort, it will pay off. Good Luck! 

It's all about incremental growth, allow yourself to fail so that you may succeed.

Hi, 

Before you go ahead reading the tips to score high, I would like to mention that I recently appeared for the AWS associate developer exam and scored 989 out of 1000. I would be sharing what all I did in terms of the resources, study materials and my experience that can stand helpful in your preparation journey. 

First & foremost I would like to tell you that if you are directly jumping to the AWS Developer exam without having any prior knowledge of AWS & its different domain and services then you would have a lot of confusions, unclarity & difficulty to understand the concept better that might affect your preparation and can go ununderstood or misunderstood along the journey which definitely you should restrain yourself from.

As it is said, the AWS services are entangled with each other, so I would suggest going through the AWS Solution architect associate course once. That would provide you a holistic view of AWS, its domains, services and help you get much more clarity, understanding and a good overview to get started with the next step of the developer`s journey on AWS.

As far as the resources and study materials are concerned, so I took the "AWS Developer Course" of Stephane Maarek on Udemy & practice test of Jon Bonso(Tutorials DOJO) on Udemy for the same. For revision purposes, Stepahe provides the link in the course's resource section to download the PPT that he uses while teaching and its a good to have one shot view of the important points in the context. I emphasize to attempt the test series of Jon Bonso because it helps you identify the calculated pace of understanding the question correctly and answering accordingly. The difficulty level of questions in the test series is kind of similar to what you would encounter in the main exam. It also provides a descriptive explanation of each question that helps a lot in understanding the different scenarios & services. Apart from this, I do recommend going through the white papers of AWS and documentations of services if time permits.

Important to note that the developer exam has more weightage for AWS serverless stack & dev tools comprising of Lambda, DynamoDB, API gateway, SAM, S3, CI/CD, ECS, X-Ray, etc other than the rest of the services, so pay a bit more attention to these.

I would like to reiterate what Stephane says and that is "not to take this learning or exam as a race" rather take your time, explore, learn and understand it thoroughly. If you don't understand the concept in one go, don't worry sit back relaxed and revisit it again and it would make sense eventually. Last but not least, don't study just for the exam but to get equipped with the cloud knowledge with in-depth insight of AWS & its offerings.

I hope this would be helpful and I wish you all the best!

Hi All,

I am here to share my experience and preparation for the developer exam.

Initially, when I have started the course I was a bit scared as there are multiple services to learn and know how they are implemented and I have less prior experience with AWS services. But no need to worry as we have got amazing resources, only we need to do is focus and spend time on it.

Course Material:

1. I have taken a course in udemy by Stephane Maarek, 29 hours of video lectures, and followed his notes.
2. Linux academy described the AWS white papers with quick short lectures.
3. It is highly recommended to go through the AWS faqs, at least for the important services, this helps us to know our understanding level of the concepts.

Example: aws.amazon.com

I also attended a few AWS online summits to know a wider understanding of AWS services that were quite interesting to know them more in real-time. We can go and register them online easily.

Jon Bonsu cheat sheets was also helpful in the final phase

Note: Do not go through all the services at a time, after every 4-5 services take a break and understand the concepts thoroughly and know how they are related to each other, making sure we are having a good understanding of the services.

Practice exams:

1.  Stephane Maarek practice exams - 6
2. Jon Bonsu practice exams -4
3. Neal Davis (Digital Cloud Training) practice exams - 6
4. Whiz labs practice exams - 6

A number of practice exams don't matter but reviewing them properly is important. Jon Bonsu and Neal Davis have given a very detailed explanation, please try to go through that as it helps us to know how to break the questions, understand and relate them to the services. I almost spent 2 hours reviewing the answers for every exam.

Note: It is very important to review your exam thoroughly not only the wrong ones but the right ones also as this helps in the regular revision of concepts and making sure we are in the correct path.

Usually, when preparing for any exam it is important to understand the concepts and how they can be used in real-times rather than memorizing the concepts.

One of the challenges usually we face even during practice exams is, all the options might serve the purpose but in the question, they will be very specific to one functionality or service. So try to identify the keywords and the specific outcome or task they are looking for so that we can easily eliminate few options. And this can be mastered during practice exams.

Exam Tips:
Do's:

1. Go by eliminating the wrong answers, highly recommended.
2. Identify the keywords.
3. If you are not confident, please mark them you can come back and review any time.
4. Stay focused.

Dont's:

1. Don't be worried if you are seeing tough questions.
2. Don't be in a rush or hurry to finish the exam.

That's all guys if we are focused and spend some time on this we can clear the exam easily.
All the best to all who are taking the exams.

Thank you,
Sravani.K 

Hello everyone,

I am here to tell you how I passed my AWS Developer exam with a score of 904/1000 in my first attempt.

I initially started off with A Cloud Guru, this one is very precise and gets right to the point in terms of the basics things you need to pass the exam. In my opinion it covers around 80% of the topics on the actual exam.

Second I did Stephane Maarek course, this was recently updated and has over 29 hours of pure content to help you pass the certification. This one is the best option out there because it has detailed information of almost everything you need to crack the certification. Stephane is a great instructor and he really knows his stuff. 

Lastly I took practice exams from Whizlabs and from Tutorialsdojo, and Jon Bonso practice exams from Udemy . 

Whizlabs exams are ok and they have good explanations on the topics cover in the exam, however I strongly recommend going to Jon's at least twice because they are harder and the content is similar in difficulty on the real exam. His explanations on each topic are top and this one for me was the most important part on the learning process. Read each explanation and not memorize the answer. Make sure you really understand the reason behind on selecting that choice. 

Personally I did the exams twice, the first one I got 63%, the second one I got 64%, I passed the third one with 75% and the last exam I got 83%, nevertheless I repeated every exam and got 100%, 98%, 100% and 96% respectively, so make sure you really understand every question. 

Aditional Tips to take in consideration

Make sure you understand the principal topics in the exam:

1 - DynamoDB : understanding indexes, read/write throughput capacity (how to calculate), streams, query vs scan

2 - Cognito: user pool vs identity pool, anonymous access, web identity and be able to describe when to use IAM and when to use cognito

3 - Encryption: at rest, on transit, how to encrypt S3 (cliend side, server side, headers), how to encrypt existing EBS (its a whole process, not as simple as s3 ), KMS (resource policy + IAM policy)

4 - Lambda, X-ray, CloudWatch events, S3 Access logging, CloudTrail, etc...

That's it folks, I hope this information could help you pass your certification with flying colors as well as it was the great help for me.

Cheers

Focus on serverless stack

• DynamoDB
• lambda
• api gateway
• Beanstalk

Then do a lot hands on using CICD tools:-

• CodeCommit
• CodeBuild
• CodePipeline
• Codedeploy

Learn cloudformation it is an amazing skill to be dealt with.

For monitoring CloudTrail, Cloudwatch and XRAY are good enough to focus on.

Surprisingly my exam had a lot of security related questions and I thought for a second it was a bit more tricky than what I practiced but if you have done hands on really well you will easily pass.

as

Hello All,

This is Sanjib Behera, currently having passed 4 AWS certifications (all 3 Associate(s) & Practitioner), 1 GCE certification, 1 OCI Foundation certification & 1 Azure fundamentals certification. and to be honest 14 days are not enough to pass any cloud exam.

First of all, I have the advantage of working in AWS projects from last 2 years, so I have worked extensively on few services like EC2/CloudWatch/VPC/S3/RDS/Cloudformation etc. I had loads of handson for this AWS Developer certification using CLI/SDK during the last 14 days(Most of them sleepless nights), it was all worth it at last.  Additionally, I also have my AWS free tier account and have extensively worked on Lambda using SDK(boto3). I also work on IAC tools like Terraform & Cloudformation for spinning up AWS resources which gives me very good perspective.

Although I do not work on all AWS services i.e. required to have knowhow to get pass this certificate, 

I started reading for this exam from 11th May via the Stephane's Udemy course for Developer Associate exam, as I like his tutorials and was parallely practicing via the CLI & SDK(boto3/python). My main focus area was to practice coding with simple scenarios using python SDK and play around the API calls via boto3 SDK especially for the services like EC2, DynamoDB, S3, RDS, ElastiCache, ECS, SQS etc.

As I have my AWS free tier account, hence in the past I have played around the AWS Devops Service(s) extensively ie. CodeCommit/CodeBuild/CodePipeline/CodeDeploy/CodeStar. Also I run some personal Devops workloads in my laptop where I use Jenkins as CI Tool and collaborate (CodeCommit, ECS, ECR, CodeDeploy) Jenkins plugins in some of the pipeline jobs. So all these experiences helped me answer all the questions related to the Devops area in my exam.

Stephane Tutorial helped me in all those services, which I have never worked with like Elastic Beanstalk/SAM/Cognito/Api Gateway/Kinesis/X-Ray etc. I personally recommend his Udemy tutorials should be taken for this certification and rest AWS certifications as well. Okay so as I didn't had experience in the above mentioned services, hence I first watched the tutorial by Stephane and then I again practiced these services on my AWS account. Handson was pretty important for me, it was not only to get passed but to learn them quite well since my next target is the 2 AWS professional certificates.

We need to learn the services API's, of all the services which I have mentioned above, next is IAM roles required by the services (for example if Lambda only requires to read S3 bucket, which managed role is required by Lambda and so on and if you are required to create inline roles, you must know how to create them or have an idea about it) and also there will be many security questions. I did not faced any questions where there was code given in the exam. Most questions were API centric, hence it is important to know what each API does and what purpose is solved by it? AWS always tries to trick you with 2 similar looking answers, but having good handson and you know about the service quite well and if you read the question well, you immediately know which of the 2 is the correct answer. Like for example if you know about DynamoDB LSI and GSI and their usecase, you can easily crack the question where both of these DynamoDB features will be given as answer options and hence if you read the question and understand the requriement well, you can select between the two.

Last but not the least, as this is developer certification, the deployment options, its use case and scenario which one is to be used in which usecase, it is very important to understand, I got around 6 questions on this topic and again having the knowhow helped me to crack all these questions.

So this is it , daily dedicated sleepless 8 hours for 14 consecutive days after having dinner.

So this is my journey to pass the AWS Developer Associate Certificate.

At the mid of 2019, I was just a user of AWS services without any deep knowledge of how things should be correctly configured. The company that I work for had some web solutions hosted on EC2 instances, but as you may know cost handling at AWS even for a newbie is a true myth so you can't miss with it incautiously as it would cost you too much that you may not afford to pay.

I determined that I need to learn how it should be done. So I looked at the various tracks and certification paths and found that the most suitable one according to my current career is the Developer track specially as I am really interested about Devops.

Actually it took me about 3 months from starting the preparation course till taking my exam. I think it's a bit too much but it was due to my full-time job timeline limitations.

Getting to the preparation strategy I followed: 

• I got the foundational information about AWS services, use cases and hands on from Stephane Maarek course AWS Certified Developer Associate at Udemy, it's really great and concise course with many hands-on and hints about critical tricks and also very useful tips. The one cons about the course is that, It was a bit outdated compared to the exam content. But the good news is that, recently this month, Stephane has published a massive content update that covers most of the new exam contents.
• Neal Davis site DigitalCloud.training cheat sheets were very useful to summerize and review after finishing the course.
• TutorialsDojo practice exam and flash card had a maximum advantage at the last day and even the last minutes.

Practice this the key for passing and getting the most out of this exam, so keep it in mind, passing the exam and being certified is important but being qualified is far much important, AWS is useful so make use of it. 

Course of Stephen marekee in udemy is more than enough for developer, and question's I mostly got from practise test which I prepared jon bonsco, neal Davis, and whizlabs I got almost 95%+ questions from above 3 courses.You will have mostly direct questions, I fell developer exam is easier when compare to solutions architect one, In solution architect it is mostly based on scenarios.And I mostly learned from practise test

In order to prepare for this exam it took me about 20 day. Because before this one I was preparing for Solution Architect. Those two exams are a little similar to each other. Before starting to prepare, I put some kind of deadline(it really helps). Some people even registers for a specific data(but you can always change it).

The first thing you should do is to create AWS account. And just get your hands dirty!

•  I have started learning with A Cloud Guru (https://acloud.guru). This guys explains very well. Make sure to take notes, at least exam tips. And try to do or understand all labs.
•  Then I was watching Youtube video courses from Denis Astahov at ADT-IT channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-sAMvDe7gTmBbub-rWljZg). This video course is in Russian. This channel gave a  knowledge not only in AWS, but also Jenkins, Ansible, Git, Docker. All of these tool are useful in Developer role.
• I have read AWS Documentations to learn about some services.
• AND DO THE LABS!

I hope my little article will help you! GOOD LUCK!!

I have started preapring for AWS Certified Developer Associate in September 2019. I was confused on starting with AWS Certified Developer Associate or AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate. After doing some research i started with Developer cert as it was very relevant for my developer profile. I purchased a AWS developer course in udemy and started preparing from there.

Everyday i spent 2 hours on my preparation. I used to take notes and also do hands on from the course. Later, i will google about additional information and i would do extra hands on for my enhanced learning. I also used to follow AWS official documentation. So in 60 days i have completed my course and hands on

The i have bought mock exams from udemy and whizlabs. I revised my entore notes and i took all the mock exams. I have got a score of about 50% only i my first attempts. Then i took another 3 to 4 weeks to revise all the mock exams and my weak areas.

Later, i have taken all the mock tests and i have obtained 90% or more in all the exams. The i revised again for a week and appeared for the final certification exam. I scored 919/1000 (91.9%). 

The developer exam is a bit tougher as you need to remember the API names, configurations, service limits,commands, syntax and other technical stuffs

I wish everyone all the best

I have scored 941/1000 in 'AWS Certified Developer- Assocoate' exam. I have done Stephen Maraek course on udemy and whizlabs practice tests..

This is just my journey and strategy I'm sharing with you.

As you go in your journey, you will evolve.

**Disclamer: THIS ARTICLE IS ONLY FOR SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO GET AWS ASSOCIATE LEVEL CERTIFICATE.

First of all I want to burst all the MYTHS people have around AWS Associate Developer certificate.

1. Do I need to know how to code to get this certification?

Ans: No

2. Will the exam test my coding skills?

Ans: No

3. Do I really need AWS experience?

Ans: No

4. Is it hard to prepare for the certificate?

Ans: No

5. Do I need to create the services and use them to get certified?

Ans: Its upto you. Its good to practice or watch the instructor doing so.

6. Whats my score to guide you guys?

Ans: 841/1000(I never got this score during my practise tests(trust me))

All you need is PERSEVERANCE.

Once you get the certificate, you will definitely its not that hard. 

Have patience. All things are difficult before they become easy. 

There are a lot of topics(about 50 to my knowledge). Just get to know about each one of them(as this is associate level exam).

The only rockstar teacher who can teach you best AWS courses is Stephane Maarek(Just trust him). Check his udemy course

I used to wake up daily early in the morning to study(this is my most active time) and used to pull couple of hours during office time and after coming home(As winters are cold in Michigan, I used that to my advantage by studying).

I prepared for certification in the following way.

1: Just listened to what Stephane Maarek said in the course and created the services using AWS console. Didn't think much. Just sticked myself to the content and finished round one of preparation.

2: Then started the course again by taking proper notes this time and as I reached half way throught the course, I started taking practice test and attempted only the familiar topics questions just for revision. As I progressed more in the course, I retook the practice tests after every topic so that I could able to revise my previous topics

3: After second round of study, I started taking pratice tests repeatedly untill I got good at them.

You will learn more by repeatedly TAKING PRACTICE TESTS of  Stephane Maarek and Tutorials Dojo by Jon Bonso in Udemy again and again.

Notes taking strategy:

1. I used pages app to write my notes so that I can access it on Mac, iPad and iPhone.

2. I maintained a separate notes for numerical related questions like "KMS supports max 4kb of data for encryption" something like that

3. While taking practise tests, I used to maintain another page to write down unknown topics so that I can check them afte practice test.

Don't stop your journey by one certificate. Do as many as you can.

ALL THE BEST :)

Papers:

• microservices on AWS
• running-containerized-microservices-on-aws
• AWS_Security_Best_Practices

Course and mock tests by https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanemaarek

My journey began around the 10th of January 2020. I had some prior hands-on experience with services like EC2, Beanstalk, and Amplify. I started looking at Udemy for Courses on AWS Certification. I then found Stephan Marek's course which I found to be extremely helpful in starting my journey. I was done with that course in about 15 days. After that, I needed to test my knowledge so I bought practice exams from Tutorials Dojo on Udemy. It had 5 papers. I practiced each paper one day and then tallied the answers. I made note of stuff that I didn't know of before taking the practice paper and then continued taking the practice tests until I consistently got 90%+ in those tests. In the last few days of preparation, I was reading AWS documentation as well as Tutorials Dojo's Cheat Sheets on their website. 

Perhaps the easiest of the three AWS. Associate level certification is the developer certification. If you have passed, architect and sysops admin, you are more than half way through for the preparation for this certification. There is a lot of overlap with the two other certifications. The trick is to use the Linux academy labs for practice. Without the actual practice, DO NOT attempt any aws certification. I didn't take any other practice exam except for the ones from acloudguru. Easy certification overall.