An Introduction to AWS Certified Developer – Associate

Table of Contents

• What The Certification Is About
• Service Level Differences
• What You Can Do With This Certification
• Personal Thoughts on the Certification
• Conclusion

This is kongs from Cloud Solution Group 2.

With the recent initiative to promote AWS cloud related learning, I have decided to take the exam for AWS Certified Developer – Associate. The good news is that, with adequate preparation and the necessary hard work, I have successfully obtained the certification.

It has come to my attention that not many people are aware of the value of this certification, or what the roles of a cloud developer are. There is also not many members in the company that actually have the certification. Since I have obtained the certification and have a better understanding of it, I would like to explain it as a way to promote it to anyone who is interested in understanding the certification, as well as increasing people’s awareness about it.

What The Certification Is About

The AWS Certified Developer – Associate certification teaches you how to be a cloud developer using AWS services. It might be very obvious, but the responsibility of a cloud developer is very different from a cloud engineer, and even more different when compared to a solution architect.

The simplest explanation regarding the cloud developer role is that, while correctly setting up the infrastructure on the cloud is crucial(since it is usually the infrastructure that incurs costs), the infrastructure is usually set up with some goal in mind.

The most common use case for any company to deploy a production cloud environment is to host and operate a web application. The web application might range from something simple, like a static website, a webpage with some features, to a multi-tiered SaaS application servicing people worldwide.

It is also very clear that these web applications need maintenance. New features get added, bug fixes and patches are scheduled, even static websites need version upgrades because the underlying tech(packages and tools) has reached end of life support. Maintaining and developing new features for these web applications hosted on the cloud would usually be the responsibility of a cloud developer.

Service Level Differences

The exam topics covered for the developer certification is slightly different from the solutions architect certification. As a developer, the main focus is intended to be cloud application development. This means that when compared to the solutions architect exam, there is less emphasis on infrastructure provisioning and deployment.

Instead, you will see more questions related to using CloudFormation settings and features, CodePipeline in detail, various application deployment strategies to reduce application down time, as well as Lambda setup and configuration.

What You Can Do With This Certification

With this certification, you have a better understanding of developing a web application on the cloud. You will be able to learn to how to setup a pipeline for regular web application deployment on the cloud, as well as designing it to achieve full application uptime even during development.

The certification is surprisingly useful when it comes to engineers who wish to implement DevOps. The reasoning is that the methodology of DevOps is to automate the entire process of web application development, from the build phase, unit testing, front end testing, up until the deployment phase.

Building a pipeline is not difficult, but maintaining the pipeline and modifying to achieve the desired deployment, and fully automating it is challenging. However, with the knowledge that you will gain through learning cloud development, the process is both achievable and understandable.

Personal Thoughts on the Certification

I think that the certification has it’s own value, especially if you are closely involved with developments of web applications on the cloud. Specifically, the knowledge that you gain from the certification really shines when your work is closely related to web application development on the cloud.

Personally, I think that the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate certification is valuable while acting as an medium level introduction to AWS cloud. However, it is a certification that is commonly sought after, and conversely has become over saturated. Cloud engineers typically obtain the AWS Certified Developer – Associate certification or AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer – Associate certification to stand out better while improving their own skills to better handle a wide range of tasks. Therefore, I believe the certification offers a new perspective and domain knowledge, even for certified cloud engineers.

Conclusion

I personally think that the AWS Certified Developer – Associate has its own value, especially if you are aiming to become a cloud developer or have the desire to break into the field of DevOps. For members that currently have the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate certification, getting this certification can also help you stand out and become more capable of handling developer related tasks. Last but not least, I believe that these certifications can act as a foundation towards obtaining the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional certification. I recommend members to take a look at this certification and consider taking it.