How to Prepare for AWS Certified Developer - Associate

I recently cleared my AWS Certified Developer - Associate certification. Back in September 2018 I had cleared another AWS certification - AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate. When I started learning about cloud these two certifications generated my interest since these certifications test your awareness and knowledge or working in AWS cloud environment. Almost every enterprise needs developers who are Cloud aware and who can develop cloud native application. This exams aims to identify developers who can create cloud native applications in AWS.

I thought of attempting the Developer Associate exam late last year but kept postponing preparations. I started the preparations in January and booked my exam appointment in a PSI center. I went on to reschedule the exam date two more times. Whenever the exam dates were near I used to feel that my preparations were not sufficient enough. Finally I made up my mind and fixed the 16th April 2019 as the date when I would attempt the exam. I went on to clear the exam that day. The objective of this article to help others in preparing for this exam with what I learnt while preparing.

So here are my tips ...

1. Set a deadline and book your exam. If you don't set the date you will not be able to take the preparation seriously. Eventually you can lose months or years. Once you set up the date, your mindset changes you will be more willing to study.
2. Go through a course. I went through acloudguru course. However you can go through any other course also which you like. These courses are well organized and help you understand the requirements better.
3. Attempt Quizzes. Quizzes help in recalling the knowledge and register the concepts better in your brain.
4. Make notes and flashcards. - I created flashcards in Ankiweb on my desktop. This applications help you by asking you the questions after certain time interval and helps in remembering the concepts long term.
5. Repeat and Repeat. - I would like to emphasize that you should repeat the concepts by watching the videos and attempt the labs again and again. For the videos I would suggest increasing the speed to 2x when you watch it the second time to save time. If required you can repeat a section which you need to refer again.

Some topics which are very import to do practically for the exam which I found were tested in exam.

1. Create EC2 instances and run few scripts.
2. Create and run Lambdas and understand the configuration.
3. Understand and create API gateway and connect it to Lambdas.
4. ECS and Docker. Try to deploy with ECS.
5. Create a hello world application and deploy it in Elastic Beanstalk. Try to install different versions of the same app. Then try using different deployment options.
6. Create users, groups and roles in IAM and assign it to users and resources such as EC2.
7. Create buckets in S3 and try to create private and public files. Try to create a website in S3 bucket.
8. Create cloud front distribution and understand the various options and their meaning while creating the cloud front distribution.
9. Create a dynamo db table and create Local and Global secondary index and understand the practical reason to create them. Also understand the provision utilization for write, eventual and strongly consistent reads.
10. Understand the cloudwatch logs and how to configure them.
11. Encrypt S3 bucket with KMS and SSE keys.
12. Understand the cognito well and also understand its use cases.
13. What are the various CI/CD services. Try to use Code Commit and Code Deploy services and also understand what are the purpose of other services such as Code Pipeline.
14. Understand what are the steps to configure AWS X-Ray.
15. Understand cloudwatch and create a small stack with help of cloud formation.

I hope you find the above tips useful. I am sure if you try this tips not only will you be able to pass the exams easily you will also be able to apply the knowledge practically.