I have just taken the AWS Certified Developer - Associate Exam on July 1st of 2019. The result? I failed.
The AWS Certified Developer - Associate (DVA-C01) has a scaled score between 100 and 1,000. The minimum scaled score needed to pass the exam is 720.
I got 642
The total number of questions was 65. I did some rough calculations. With 5 more correct answers, I would've passed the exam.
Recap and reflection
- When I was taking the exam and gone over the questions, I already felt I was not going to pass. I review my questions. Nothing.
- What did I do next? I used the erasable paper provided by the testing center to write down the topic of each question.
- What did I find? There were a lot of scenario-based questions, I was expected that. Question using a combination of AWS services, I also expected that. But throttling, troubleshooting, and root cause analysis? Not so much. There were no simple questions. Nothing about SQS (Simple Queue Service), SNS (Simple Notification Service). Also, no computational questions for WCU (Write Capacity Unit) and RCU (Read Capacity Unit) on DynamoDB, which I'm also prepared for.
- What did I feel? I must've gotten unlucky with the question pool and maybe I need more time to do more real hands-on experience in using AWS services and encounter problems.
What now?
Did I regret taking the exam? No. I learned a LOT during the process.
I'm still optimistic as usual and here's my Jedi Mind Trick:
Failure makes me work hard and be more humble (makes me think I'm a human being after all).
Accomplishments (as much I love them) can make you complacent if you are not mindful.
Timeline
2018
September
I got my feet wet with AWS services
- AWS Workshop - Build a Modern Web Application Architecture by AM (Allen-Michael) Grobelny
November
I learned simple project ideas to create in AWS.
- Build a Serverless Portfolio in 7 days by Fernando Medina Corey
December
I got hands-on experience with IAM, S3, Lambda, API Gateway
- AWS Serverless Workshop by Kevin Wang
Simple project created from the workshop here.
2019
I presented about AWS services to my schoolmates.
January
My own talks:
March
Watched tons of AWS conference talks. Check my blog here on my journey in my master's program.
AWS Educate - Cloud Computing Introduction and Software Developer Pathway
- Cloud Computing Introduction video playlist
- Software Developer Pathway video playlist
June
I resumed my studies for AWS Developer Exam as I felt some confidence that I can do well in the exam.
Tip on how to learn again here.
- Paper presentation at CISSE 2019 Las Vegas - Serverless Computing Architecture Security and Quality Analysis for Back-end Development
- AWS Whitepapers
- Udemy course from acloudguru - AWS Certified Developer - Associate 2019
- Qwiklabs
Qwiklab courses
- Introduction to Amazon Simple Storage (S3)
- Introduction to AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)
- Introduction to EC2
- Introduction to Amazon Elasticsearch Service
- Introduction to Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) - SQL Server
- Introduction to DynamoDB
- Introduction to AWS CloudFormation Designer
- Introduction to AWS Lambda
- Introduction Amazon to API Gateway
- Serverless Web Apps Using Amazon DynamoDB - Part 1
- Serverless Web Apps Using Amazon DynamoDB - Part 2
- Serverless Web Apps Using Amazon DynamoDB - Part 3
- Quest: Serverless Web Apps Using DynamoDB
Conclusion
As of writing this blog, I'm moving on to other stuff for now.
My current job as graduate teaching assistant in City University of Seattle, requires me to focus on TypeScript and create content.
We are also preparing to teach Amazon apprentices and it requires us to study up Linux system administration, networking, web development, MEAN stack, and Django to able to support them.
As an Auth0 Ambassador, I need to get up to speed with identity and security. Awesome material from Auth0 here.
As an open-source contributor, I need to refactor my code and create a new pull request in the hackathon-starter repository.
Reach out here:
Till next time! Don't let failure define you =)