I just passed the CLF-C01 AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Exam (AWS CCP) and like I did for the AZ-900: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals exam, I wanted to add some quick notes on the resources I used to prepare for it.
Before I continue, a note on cloud certifications and their value or lack of. For some reason, these certifications do seem attractive to some recruiters. This is perhaps because if nothing else, they indicate an individuals willingness to self-study and learn skills independently. However, if the ultimate goal is bolster ones hireability, I would not recommend pursuing these certifications without putting in the time to also truly use the services to build and deploy real applications. The winning combination for these certifications is having them in addition to work experience using the cloud services whether through an internship, volunteer position, or full-time job. If you don’t have any of those, then personal projects on GitHub that demonstrate their usage could stand in. Only then can one speak convincingly about the services and how they employed them to solve real-world problems.
Okay, now to the meat of the discussion. The AWS CCP is a beginner level AWS exam and although it has questionable value for a developer, I decided to take it anyway because doing so allows you to earn a 50% discount on a subsequent AWS Exam. I have my eyes on the AWS Certified Developer Associate, (DVA-C01) so getting this discount makes sense. This was especially important as I couldn’t find any other way to get a discount for AWS exams unlike is the case with Microsoft Azure certifications.
I prepped for this exam in a week using the following resources:
- AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials course available on Coursera.
- AWS Cloud Practitioner Learning Path on Pluralsight
- The Official AWS Services Overview Whitepaper
If you don’t have much experience with the AWS, I would recommend supplementing the above with this free course courtesy of freeCodeCamp.
Next up, DVA-C01.