Hello everybody, today we're going to be talking about this shiny certification:
AWS Certified Developer Associate. I'm going to be answering three questions. Number one,
why should you get this certification? Number two, how did i get this certification in two
weeks back in 2019? And number three, how can you do the same now? Let's start with
the why - why should you get this certification? Well, an obvious argument is the financial one:
the cloud computing industry is currently valued at around 270 billion dollars.
AWS, which is the largest of the three major cloud providers, controls about a third of that market
and it's growing at 30 percent per year. In spite of this - or perhaps because of this - there's a
serious shortage of people who know how to use AWS compared to demand for the skills,
and there's especially a shortage of people who know how to use it well. There's a lot of benefit
for a company to move their infrastructure onto the cloud: they don't need to buy or lease entire
server racks in multi-year contracts, they can deploy new applications quickly and seamlessly,
and they can take advantage of huge economies of scale to run their business faster,
cheaper and more securely than they could otherwise. Therefore, for a company that
employs software engineers, it's really useful if those software engineers understand how the cloud
works. In particular, companies are looking for software engineers who understand cloud storage,
compute services, databases, deployment and a bit of networking. That's what this cert is about. So
if you're a software engineer working at a company that uses AWS - and most do - or if you're an
aspiring software engineer looking to push your skills further, then this set is a fantastic way
to learn a lot about the underlying systems the software you build runs on. And if you're
a student, it's one of the absolute best ways to show off your proactivity and industry knowledge
to potential employers. Uni just doesn't teach you this stuff, but you can bet having a cert
like this will make you stand out from the crowd SO MUCH when you graduate. I say this to inspire,
not to flex - and you'll have to take my word on that - but the number of recruiters who started
reaching out to me after i had stockpiled a few AWS certifications was mind-blowing. So if you
like the idea of being propositioned for six figure roles by head hunters while you lie down
and sip margaritas, this cert might be for you. I hope I've convinced you that this cert could
be worthwhile, but real talk now, there are some caveats. When I first got AWS certified, my head
inflated a little. I felt like I had acquired some secret knowledge that nobody knew about,
and that I deserved thousand dollar day rates for it despite being a second year university student.
Obviously, this wasn't the case. The reality is, there's a whole world out there beyond
the Associate level certs - they're just a way to get your foot in the door. So don't do this
just for the money, do it because you enjoy it enough to stick around for the long game:
maybe get some more certs, rack up a few years of industry experience,
and then you can start looking at penthouse apartments. I promise it will be rewarding,
but like all things that matter, getting good at cloud takes time. Alright, now that I've scared
you all off, let's talk about how I got this cert back in 2019 in just two weeks. Picture the scene:
I had a couple of weeks until my uni exams, and I just finished getting my AWS Certified Cloud
Practitioner as well as AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate. If you want to see how I
did those, check out the video suggestions that just popped up above. Anyway, I was sitting down
getting ready to prepare for my uni exams when I thought to myself, "how can I make this harder
than it needs to be? What if I challenge myself to finish off the remaining two Associate level certs
in the next month - starting with AWS Certified Developer Associate"? It sounded like a pretty
dumb idea to be honest - in the middle of uni exams - and so that's exactly what I did. In
terms of the resources that I used to get the AWS Certified Developer Associate cert back then,
I'm not sure how relevant that is, because 2019 is a few decades ago in cloud-years and a lot has
changed since then. Nevertheless, for the sake of curiosity, I'll let you know what I used.
The main one that I used was ACloudGuru. Don't take notes just yet, because I've got some much
better suggestions in the next section. Anyway, ACloudGuru is a subscription-based site with
courses on a variety of different cloud platforms, and they naturally had a course on the AWS
Certified Developer Associate exam. They're really mass market courses designed to tick the cert box
and get you to pass without really understanding the material at a deep level, so I don't recommend
them anymore. If you think I'm being harsh, take a look at this a reddit comment from an
ACloudGuru employee: "the issue with deep dive style courses in the context of certifications
is that while there is a good portion of people who want that deep deep content, there's an equal
or larger group that just wants the information they need to pass the exam." So that's the mindset
that ACloudGuru has when they build their courses. Using this ACloudGuru course I only scored 87%
on the AWS Certified Developer Associate exam, and more importantly, I felt like most of the
learning I'd done wasn't from the course - it was from reading documentation, reading white papers,
looking at AWS Re:Invent videos and all these other things I did which had a much lower payoff
ratio in terms of the time I invested, because I had so many knowledge gaps to fill. Compare that
to the similar but much more difficult AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional exam,
which I completed last year and got 93% on. Why? Because I used ACloudGuru for the former
and "deep deep" courses for the latter. If anything, it will take you less time to follow
the deep content because the amount of knowledge gaps I had from the ACloudGuru course that I
had to plug with other resources that I didn't really have a structured learning schedule with
took me an extra week or so on top of the actual following the course. Versus when I followed a
thorough course that covered everything it needed to cover then I didn't feel like I had to go
out and get that extra content because I wasn't missing knowledge. So let's talk about what I'd
do now instead. Anyone who's seen any other AWS certification video of mine can fill in the blanks
here, because I'm sure I sound like a broken record at this point. Hands down the best course
you can use for this Developer cert is - drumroll - Adrian Cantrill's Certified Developer Associate
course. This is available at learn.cantrill.io, it costs $40, and I can't recommend it more. If
that's the one piece of advice you take away from this video, I'm happy. There's a second
course that's not bad either, and that's Stephane Maarek's course on Udemy. A quarter of a million
people have taken this course and it's managed to maintain a 4.7 star rating so he's clearly doing
something right. I haven't personally taken this one but I have used Stephane's courses for other
certs and they're all fantastic. So those are your two best bets. Once you've completed one
or both of those - and I'd recommend Adrian's over Stephane's, but a bit of variety can't hurt - then
your next step is to find practice tests. I've only got one recommendation here, and that's
Tutorials Dojo. I can't emphasize enough how essential these practice tests have been for me.
The way I use them is like this. First, I pick a video course like Adrian's or Stephane's,
and follow as much as i feel like. I take notes like I discussed in my note-taking video,
then when I hit a roadblock or a topic that I'm not so certain about, I pause the course and head
over to Tutorials Dojo. Tutorials Dojo splits the practice questions into Timed Mode, Review Mode
and Section Based. To start with, I open Section Based, choose the topic I'm having trouble with,
and then do a few practice questions. Each question has a super detailed explanation
once you've chosen your answer that helps you to really understand the fundamentals. Once
I've done a few of these, patched my knowledge gaps, and maybe Googled around a bit as well,
then I'll head back to the course. Then, when I finally finish the course and I'm ready to sit the
exam, I come back to TD and I do the Timed Mode practice exam. If I get above about 80% on that,
I'm usually happy to go ahead and sit the real exam. Note that quite often the TD questions
are actually harder than the real AWS ones. This is a good thing because it means you might find
that the exam isn't as hard as you thought after doing the TD practice questions. So that's been
my strategy on all exams I've taken recently and it's one that's worked really well for me,
letting me score more than 90% on nearly all of the AWS exams I've taken. And so that
wraps up the three main things I wanted to talk about: why to get the cert, how I got the cert,
and how you should get the cert. However, there's one really important thing I also wanted to talk
about that I don't think gets enough attention. I started this video with the premise that you could
get this cert in two weeks, and that's absolutely true. Depending on your experience, if you put in
three to four hours a day on weekdays and a bit more than that on weekends, within two weeks you
could be ready to sit this cert. But that raises an important question: why do you want to do it
in two weeks? What benefit will it bring you? For me the reason has always been a love of learning,
and a bit of a crazy streak that tries to push me to do things I didn't think I could. What I want
you to do before the end of this video is to grab a pen and a piece of paper, and write down a goal.
The goal should be of the format: "I will get my AWS Certified Developer Associate certification by
X date", choosing X as a date somewhere between two weeks and two months from now, depending
on how much you're willing to commit to. Then I want you to write down why you want to do this.
Is it to find a new job? Is it to build something that you've wanted to build for a long time?
Or is it evidence towards a promotion? I don't think there are any wrong answers here - if
it motivates you, it works. Finally, if you're serious about this, you have to be accountable.
Life will try and get in the way, and you have to be serious enough that you won't get derailed. So
I want you to pick a sizeable amount of money to you - it could be five times what you earn
in an hour, could be ten times where you earn in an hour - then choose somebody that you
can rely on and tell them that if you don't hit your goal of getting the certification
by the date you've specified, that money is theirs. THAT is how you get your AWS Certified
Developer Associate in two weeks. Peace out everybody, have a great day, and good luck.