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Comment by js4ever | Hacker News Reader

Well done! Thanks for those who needs to pass AWS Certs.

But on another side after checking few flashcards it seems you will turn into an AWS Marketing Parrot, more than really learning skills (Eg: question about AWS Shield)

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Very nice. My team is prepping for AWS certs at the moment, and this is helpful.

Passing the exam does mean acting like an AWS Marketing Parrot. That is an unavoidable aspect of it. The exam is AWS certification, not "general IT skills". So I would not call this a flaw of your card content. Your cards show an awareness of this. Your card about SOAP APIs points out that the correct exam answer is technically wrong.

I would strongly suggest that you NOT take hliyan's suggestion of making a "how-to" version of the slides. "How-to" is very different than "pass exam", it would be very difficult to successfully address both needs.

I respect Hhliyan's need (and share it myself often enough); I respect it enough to suggest that it gets addressed in a way which is likely to satisfy it. "Pass the exam" flashcards have another purpose.

In conversations recently around technical hiring I've found a heavy emphasis on "AWS" knowledge rather than infrastructure know-how or proven experience building on top of any stack.

Sometimes, people don't even know what AWS is except that it is needed by their product. They need someone "strong in AWS." They don't know what AWS products they use or what they do.

Separately, I have had a very senior developer convey a sense of respect for candidates that know AWS things that this developer does not know. I was surprised that the developer would give a pass on any subject so easily.

There seems to be some sort of an implied belief in ability simply because the person can recite Amazon's branded solution names and have configured these things before. In part, because the interviewer doesn't know the buzzwords, they can't probe for the actual depth of experience.

It feels almost like a "no one ever got fired for buying IBM" situation. And on the candidate side a "can't beat em, join em" by being able to recite AWS jargon, regardless of how well you can build and choose solutions to fit business needs.

I don't want to hear people tell me only how to solve problems with AWS's legos. Sure, we use them - and sure, knowing them will help you, but those tools are a crutch that is going to prevent you from solving tough problems if it's the only thing you know. You don't want to be stuck on a problem just because it's not in Amazon's toolbox yet.

But on another side after checking few flashcards it seems you will turn into an AWS Marketing Parrot, more than really learning skills

I have a feeling that's partly the intent of the whole certifications program. I'm someone who has no use for AWS (nor interest in any cloud stuff, really) and has never even looked at any of their services in detail, but was once challenged to try one of their practice exams, and recall getting about 75% of the questions right simply by educated guessing with a perspective of "which of these answers seems to make sense and would make the most $$$ for Amazon?"

I have to agree. While the cards themselves are a useful format, I wish this had more "How do you..." rather than "What is..." questions. E.g. Q: "How do you provide temporary credentials to IAM users to access some AWS resource?" A: "STS"

Thanks for the feedback! I'll take it into consideration when I create more cards (AWS deck is done, but I will create Azure deck next). I tried to strike a balance between different question types (e.g. "what", "how", "why", "compare", "which"). I thought that this variation in question format is nice when you're plowing through a lot of questions. Maybe I have too many "what" questions. Those are the easiest to think up and write down.

That's great. That way it can cater to both those who are looking to get a certification and those who just want to apply the skills (like myself). Another thought: would you be open to converting the content from HTML-in-JSON to markdown (one file per card, perhaps?). I wanted to fork your repo and create cards for various different skills, but the format kind of put me off.

Try to fork the repo and run it locally. There's a button for creating cards (button appears only when running it locally). It's still HTML-in-JSON, but you get instant preview while editing, and I think it's a nice way to format cards. HTML offers more flexibility in formatting than Markdown does. That said, I totally understand you might prefer a different format, and if you want to work on it, I'm sure you will be able to replace the HTML-in-JSON format with Markdown.

Hi,

Thanks for creating this.

I have forked and I am running the app locally. But, I don't see any button for creating the cards.

Edit: I had to manually change the visibility style in styles.css and then it worked.

Thanks for the feedback! You're definitely right that some of the questions are simply parroting AWS marketing points. I tried to optimize the question set for passing Associate level AWS cert exams, and unfortunately those exams require you to memorize certain AWS marketing crap.

The lower level certs are easier to pass, and you might end up sounding like an AWS Marketing Parrot.

The higher level certs are the real deal. You will work your ass off to get them, and I don’t think flash cards will help much. But there are sites out there that help you train for the test, and they can also give you sample tests to work from. If you can pass a number of those sample tests with good scores, then you’ll probably do okay on the real tests.

Acloud.guru is used internally with Amazon (and is free for anyone who has an @amazon.com e-mail address), but it’s not the only option out there. John Bonzo has some of the highest regarded AWS training videos in the AWS Training community, and Amazon SDEs have recommended to me the freecodecamp.org videos as well.

I don't think passing a certification deprived people of analytic thought

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