Rishi Agrawal
My quest for AWS
How I achieved the AWS Certified Developer Associate certification — and the lessons I learned along the way
Why this article
Man.
It was an arduous arduous road to last weekend. I summoned all my courage, went down to the Pearson testing center, took the AWS DVA-C02 Certified Developer Associate exam…and passed! Finally, it was done!
Considering the time it took, the struggle, and the self-doubt I realized it might be helpful if others might be able to learn from my experience. So here I will share my journey and the lessons I learned along the way.
And of course — being blessed to be in tech, I have gained from the generosity of those who have gone before and shared what they have learned. It might be that I have a “duty to document”, so here it goes.
Why AWS?
I was rapidly running out of runway back at the University of Maryland; it would soon be time to graduate. What to do? What could I do to make myself more employable and get some additional real-world skills? Admittedly, I was also hooked on the idea of learning some more stuff and learning a couple additional useful things.
Well, I did a bit of digging around online and found out that pretty much the only kinds of certifications that add any sort of value are those from Amazon Web Services.
Coming across AWS… I was certain that I had seen AWS before somewhere. But where? Then I remembered — a lot of Y Combinator startups wanted people who knew AWS! Knowing that it was a skill that was in-demand was just another reason to start my own AWS journey.
Apart from hearing so much about AWS and getting AWS thrown around everywhere, I realized that above all I was genuinely interested in learning about it. Sure, AWS is a highly useful and employable skill. But it really would only help if I was genuinely interested in it, which I was.
AWS also seemed to be somewhat of a “meta skill” that I could acquire, something that would accelerate progress in other areas as well. Fundamentally AWS is a cloud provider and provides cloud infrastructure. It would be a fun way to build some personal projects for “fun and profit” along the way as well. Knowledge that could not go to waste etc.
And I figured that if I were to spend the effort learning it, I might as well learn in a more structured way and get a certification to boot.
Why Certified Developer Associate (DVA-C02) specifically?
I wish I could provide some in-depth analysis out here, but I don’t have any. There wasn’t really any grand thought process behind me choosing the DVA-C02 certification over the others.
In so far as there was a decision process, I just found the material that the certification would cover to be the most interesting and hopefully the most useful. I liked the idea of being a “certified AWS developer”.
And with a certain amount of ambition, I felt that I could power through the learning curve and go directly from zero to “someone who knows AWS” by skipping the introductory “AWS Cloud Practitioner” stage and certification.
Of course, I was also just browsing the excellent and useful r/AWS subreddit where the Certified Developer Associate certification came up often as the top choice as a first certificate.
Resources I used
| Resource | Description |
|---|---|
| Stephane Maarek’s Udemy course | I used this to learn the actual material, skipping over the hands-on activities. While “learning by doing” is great, I don’t know whether they would have been actually useful |
| AWS documentation | to fill in gaps in my understanding |
| Anki | made my own deck with everything I learned |
| Tutorials Dojo practice exams | these were good but I ran out of exams way too easily by starting practice exams too early. I might be the only person who has had this problem, though |
| SkillCertPro practice exams | I personally loved these because you get a massive load of practice tests. |
| r/AWSCertifications | Classic. Extremely helpful and insightful subreddit. Most of my research and attack plan was created by reading posts from here. It’s how I found many of the materials I would use, actually |
| AWS Discord | I didn’t use this too much but it’s nice to have a community available (in the exams-prep channel) |
Timeline for context
Jan 2024: final year of college coming up; began to explore doing an AWS cert, didn’t actually take any steps towards doing it
May - Jun 2024: began studying in earnest using Stephane Maarek’s Udemy course
July - Dec 2024: didn’t do anything towards AWS during my final semester of college.
Jan 2025: intense studying for AWS; had this crazy idea that I could finish it in two weeks of intense studying
Feb 2025 - Apr 2025: moderately intense yet often off-and-on preparation. As the prep drags on for what seems like forever I enter a certain fugue state where I’m still working on it but it just gets more and more painful.
May 2025: After a breakthrough on Skillcertpro practice exam scores (I had run out of TutorialsDojo exams long ago), which itself followed a marathon week in which I reviewed difficult topics, I scheduled the exam for the next day, walked in, and passed!
My journey to exam day
I seriously began studying for the AWS Certified Developer cert during the summer of 2024. A few hours every day. I had this notion that I might finish it off that summer itself. Then my final semester of school began and I did nothing until I graduated.
While looking for a job post-graduation, I decided to brush off the AWS DVA-C02 cert and get back at it. I again had this notion that I would be able to finish it in two weeks. I was able to finish the Maarek course in two weeks.
Then I began to really struggle and it was crash and burn.By that I mean every time I did a practice exam I would score around 60% or maybe even 50%. If I did the same exam again I would score something high like 80%. A different practice exam restarted the cycle. This meant that I wasn’t really understanding the material, just remembering previous answers.
Without setting an exam date, I just kept chiselling away at the certification without really feeling any sense of progress or urgency. Every time an interview or something or the other would come up, I would drop the certification only to take it up again later. The longer it dragged on, the worse I felt. I did not want to abandon all the progress I had made so far though. So I marched on feeling trapped in this limbo state I had created for myself.
Finally there was a breakthrough. I scored 77% on a SkillCertPro practice exam (I had long since run out of Tutorials Dojo practice exams). At first I couldn’t believe it. On subsequent exams I was back to the 65% I was averaging. So I started reviewing the topics I was consistently getting wrong.
Finally a Friday rolled around and I scored 80% on a practice exam. I then scored around that on another practice exam. So I scheduled the exam for the next day, walked in…and passed!
Exam logistics
Although you can take the exam online from the comfort of your own home for the same price, I chose to take it in a Pearson Test Center. I didn’t want to worry about my environment or setting up software on my computer. Problems would be Pearson’s fault. Most accounts I read on Reddit, though, involved people just taking the exam online.
I got to know of the result within 18 hours, but I knew upfront it is usually within 24 and definitely before 5 days.
Afterwards I did what should be standard procedure: I added the certificate to my LinkedIn profile using the Certly link!
What I would have done different
Hindsight being 20/20, looking back it’s very clear to me that I made a few mistakes and took a few wrong turns along the way.
The very first thing I would have done differently is actually taken the Cloud Practitioner certificate first. The reason for this is two-fold.
Firstly, it would have broken up the stretch of time for which I chipped away at the material into a smaller initial first section and given me something to show for my efforts. Starting off at the Developer Associate certification (which is more of an intermediate certification and not a beginner certification) meant that I had a lot more to learn in order to get any visible sign of progress.
Going for the Developer Associate certification first would have also given me a taste of all of the different paths available within AWS. While this is somewhat of a weaker point seeing that (of course) there is a lot of overlap between all of the Associate-level certificates as well, understand is that the Cloud Practitioner certificate is specifically designed to be an introduction to AWS as a whole instead of diving into the deep end like how I did with the Developer Associate certificate. Of course, now that I have the Developer Associate it would be useless to go back and get the intro-level cert, but ideally I would have segmented my AWS journey using the Cloud Practitioner as well.
The second thing I would have done (and this is crucial) is set a date for the exam! I believe that this is the single greatest mistake and the one that cost me the most. Every time something else came up, I would throw DVA-C02 onto the back burner and forget about it. Without a fixed exam date, I was just able to procrastinate on actually taking the exam forever!
Guess what? Even when I finally bit the bullet and went down to the testing center, I didn’t feel prepared.
That’s just life!
Worst case I would not have passed the exam and been dejected, but it would have been motivation to come back harder and stronger than ever.
The third thing I wish I had done differently is thoroughly spent gone through the entire Stephane Maarek course and taken my time with it before moving on to practice exams. What you need to understand about the AWS Associate-level certs is that they are genuinely difficult. There are no straightforward answers to be found anywhere. Each question combines several disparate topics together. This is by no means one of those exams where you can get by by just memorizing a bunch of facts — although you need to know your stuff as well.
Optimistic fellow that I am, I kept trying to jump the gun and rush into the practice exams. Predictably, the questions were gobbledygook to me. My progress would have been much faster if (paradoxically) I had just slowed down.
Conclusion
It’s great to learn formally but it’s time to build. I’m going to go and build something with my new-found AWS knowledge!
If you have any questions, please contact me and best of luck.