On certificates

I finally booked the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate exam end of this month.

I have been a software engineer for close to a decade. Almost all of that time was spent building iOS apps. In mobile development, certificates were not a thing. There are no reputable iOS or Android certificates, so I never placed much emphasis on obtaining one.

That said, cloud knowledge has always been sitting somewhere at the back of my mind. I have encountered it occasionally through work and picked up some knowledge here and there, but I never delved deeply into it or utilized it professionally.

Booking this exam is not about changing careers (or perhaps it is?), it is about admitting there’s a gap I have ignored for a long time.

Mobile development hides a lot of infra decisions. You build nice UIs, consume APIs, deploy builds, and then move on to the next tasks. It is comfortable, but also limiting.

Studying for this certificate forced me to think beyond the app. To look at what happens behind the scenes: cost, scaling, trade-offs, and failure modes.

I don’t know how much the certificate itself will matter. Probably not much, but the process matters. Having a deadline beats wishful goals.

Most importantly, I can finally stop telling myself “I should do this someday”.