I've recently started learning AWS through a Cloud Practitioner course. My main goal is building real AWS knowledge rather than earning the certification, and I'm not sure I'll pay to take the exam. I want more hands-on experience, so I'm considering the Cloud Resume Challenge. However, one of its requirements appears to be having the AWS certification, which makes me wonder whether I should wait. Would it be better to finish the Cloud Practitioner material first and then do the challenge without taking the exam, or should I begin the challenge now and learn the required services as I go?
4 Answers
If your priority is practical knowledge, start the challenge sooner rather than later. Debugging API Gateway routes, configuring CloudFront and certificates, and building a deployment pipeline will teach you much more deeply than memorizing exam definitions and pricing categories. Keep notes about the problems you solve so you can turn them into useful project and interview examples.
The challenge is useful if you treat it as a learning framework, not as proof that employers will automatically care about the finished site. It can teach deployment, infrastructure, version control, and automation, although the resume’s HTML and CSS are less important than understanding how everything is hosted and delivered. Build it yourself rather than blindly following a guide, and adapt the tools to what you want to learn.
Use the Cloud Practitioner course as a map, but don’t treat the exam as a prerequisite. It gives you a broad overview of services, while the challenge can turn that overview into practical work. Once you understand the basics of IAM, S3, Lambda, DNS, and related services, start building and learn the rest as problems come up. Set a billing alert, enable MFA, and double-check both before creating resources.
You can absolutely study the Cloud Practitioner material without sitting the exam. The certification is mostly a high-level introduction to AWS terminology and major services, so it can help you choose technologies for the project, but the credential itself isn’t necessary for learning. Follow the challenge at your own pace and use the course whenever you need background information.
That makes sense. I’m mainly interested in using the project to understand how the services fit together, so I’ll focus on the implementation rather than just checking off the requirements.