Learning

I’m only weeks out from recertifying my AWS Solutions Architect Professional for the second time, and most of the studying is sitting a three-hour practice exam after work and then spending another few hours going back through it afterwards. It’s an architecture exam so it does test patterns, but they’re AWS-specific service combinations, the deep single-vendor recall of one stack, and my actual days are spread across AWS, GCP, Azure, on-prem and a pile of AI tooling, jumping between Windows, Mac and Linux. The exam wants me deep in one place, and real work has been taking me wide for years. ...

I’d written off Claude Cowork before I’d really used it. What changed my mind was having to demo it as part of some cross-company AI training I’m running, which meant finding a reason for it to exist for people who weren’t me. When I went looking for ways to show it to non-technical colleagues, I found things it could do for them that I’d never have looked for on my own behalf. One of them had a job that meant reconciling the same information across three systems, pulling it out of a CRM, checking it against a spreadsheet, then cross-referencing email to confirm the spreadsheet was actually up to date. It took them a good chunk of time every time they did it. By the end I had a flow that did the whole thing on a single click, and none of that was something I’d have gone looking for if I weren’t trying to make the tool make sense to someone else. ...

The biggest change I made for this AWS recert isn’t which AI I’m using, it’s that I moved my study notes out of OneNote and into Notion. Back in March I wrote about studying with custom GPTs for the AI Practitioner. The note-creation GPT had grown a system prompt that read like a software spec, the coaching one had stayed simple and useful, and the post ended with me saying I’d try Claude as a study partner for the SA Pro and figure out whether to move my notes out of OneNote. ...

I’ve held AWS certifications since 2019, starting with Cloud Practitioner and then working through Solutions Architect Associate, SysOps, Developer Associate, and Solutions Architect Professional within about a year (It was Covid year after all). I recertified the SA Pro in 2023 and passed the AI Practitioner in February this year. The SA Pro is due again, exam’s booked for end of June, so I’m back studying. My study method has been the same every time, which is watch a Stephane Maarek course on Udemy, make notes in OneNote as I go, grind practice exams. The notes are dense and compressed, topics separated by slashes, exam questions dropped in wherever they’re relevant. The formatting is all over the place because it’s written for speed of recall, not for anyone else to read. I’ve used this approach for every cert I’ve passed and never had a reason to change it. ...