I passed the AWS Certified Developer Associate Exam on my first try in 3 weeks - simonholdorf
Tags: cloud, career, aws
Published: 2022-10-15 16:10:52

####   Original Tweet From  [@simonholdorf](https://twitter.com/simonholdorf)
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I've passed the AWS Certified Developer Associate Exam on my first try and with only 3 weeks of preparation 🔥

How did I do it?

It's a matter of focus and making use of the best resources available 🛠️

I'll show you what I've used so that you can crush the exam, too 🚀

🧵👇 

- ☑️ The AWS DVA tests you on your abilities and knowledge to develop solutions on the AWS Cloud. Compared to the SAA, fewer services are involved, but the questions go more in-depth. 

- ☑️ Regarding difficulty: Many people say that this exam was easier compared to the SAA. However, for me, they were equally challenging. 

The lesson here: Difficulty is very subjective. But if you prepare well, you can definitely do this! 

- ☑️ In general, this exam will ask you many questions regarding serverless, especially AWS Lambda, DynamoDB, and API Gateway, so you really want to have a good understanding of these services! 

- ☑️ But you should also know your way around: 
1. Elastic Beanstalk,
2. EC2, 
3. X-ray, 
4. S3 hosting, 
5. CORS,
6. CI/CD, 
7. AWS Cognito, 
8. Cloudwatch, 
9. IAM, 
10. ECS, 
11. Fargate, 
12. KMS, 
13. SQS/SNS,
14. Deployment options

and some questions ask for specific API calls! 

@awscloudloud regularly updates their exam guidelines, so make sure to check out the latest version for the exam. It will give you a good overview of the relevant services &amp; concepts!
[https://d1.awsstatic.com/training-and-certification/docs-dev-associate/AWS-Certified-Developer-Associate_Exam-Guide.pdf](https://d1.awsstatic.com/training-and-certification/docs-dev-associate/AWS-Certified-Developer-Associate_Exam-Guide.pdf) 

✨Because I already have working experience with AWS for some years now and have already passed the SAA, I needed less time to prepare for this exam. But if you are a beginner, definitely take your time. It's challenging!

Resources for my learning 👇 

###1/ Stephane Maarek's Udemy course

Because I also took his SAA course, I went mainly with [@StephaneMaarek](https://twitter.com/StephaneMaarek) again and just used the specific lessons for the DVA, skipping the SAA shared ones. It's a very good course that helps a lot!
[https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-developer-associate-dva-c01/](https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-developer-associate-dva-c01/) 

[@StephaneMaarek](https://twitter.com/StephaneMaarek) 

###2/ Adrian Cantrill's course

I also bought [@adriancantrill](https://twitter.com/adriancantrill)'s course to support him and because it's definitely one of the best courses out there. His teaching style is awesome, and this would be my recommendation if you want to prepare really well!
[https://learn.cantrill.io/p/aws-certified-developer-associate](https://learn.cantrill.io/p/aws-certified-developer-associate) 

[@StephaneMaarek](https://twitter.com/StephaneMaarek) [@adriancantrill](https://twitter.com/adriancantrill) 


###3/ Tutorialsdojo's practice exams

The practice tests from [@jonbonso](https://twitter.com/jonbonso) &amp; team helped me tremendously. I wouldn't sit any AWS exam without doing their exams first!
[https://portal.tutorialsdojo.com/courses/aws-certified-developer-associate-practice-exams/](https://portal.tutorialsdojo.com/courses/aws-certified-developer-associate-practice-exams/) 

[@StephaneMaarek](https://twitter.com/StephaneMaarek) [@adriancantrill](https://twitter.com/adriancantrill) [@jonbonso](https://twitter.com/jonbonso) 


###4/ AWSCertifications Reddit

My favorite community regarding AWS certifications. Very helpful, and the members share a lot of useful insights from them taking the exams. Especially [@JulieAElkins](https://twitter.com/JulieAElkins) is inspiring!
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AWSCertifications/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AWSCertifications/) 

[@StephaneMaarek](https://twitter.com/StephaneMaarek) [@adriancantrill](https://twitter.com/adriancantrill) [@jonbonso](https://twitter.com/jonbonso) [@JulieAElkins](https://twitter.com/JulieAElkins) 


##5/ Tutorialsdojo's Cheat Sheets

These are very helpful in memorizing the main features and limitations of the major AWS services and helped me a lot!
[https://tutorialsdojo.com/aws-cheat-sheets/](https://tutorialsdojo.com/aws-cheat-sheets/) 

[@StephaneMaarek](https://twitter.com/StephaneMaarek) [@adriancantrill](https://twitter.com/adriancantrill) [@jonbonso](https://twitter.com/jonbonso) [@JulieAElkins](https://twitter.com/JulieAElkins) Now go and also pass the exam with flying colors 🔥

If you enjoyed this tweet, I have two requests 🙏

1. Follow me [@simonholdorf](https://twitter.com/simonholdorf) for more advice about Cloud, Full-Stack &amp; DevOps ☑️

2. RT the first tweet so others can find it 👇
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