What I Wish I Knew Before Starting AWS as a CSE Student
Starting AWS as a beginner can feel confusing because there are so many services and concepts. These are a few things I am learning as I start my own AWS journey.
What I Wish I Knew Before Starting AWS as a CSE Student
I am a 5th semester CSE student, and recently I started exploring AWS.
I had heard about AWS many times before. I saw it in internship requirements, job descriptions, YouTube videos and even in some college projects. But I never really understood where I should start.
When I finally started looking at AWS, the first thing I noticed was the number of services.
EC2, S3, IAM, Lambda, VPC, RDS and many more.
Honestly, it was confusing.
I started wondering:
Do I have to learn all of these?
After spending some time exploring, I realized that I don't.
My first mistake was trying to learn too much
When we are students, we sometimes think that learning more topics means learning more effectively.
I was also thinking like that.
I wanted to know about EC2, containers, databases, serverless, networking and many other things at the same time.
But then I realized that I was remembering names rather than understanding concepts.
So I decided to slow down.
Instead of asking:
"How many AWS services can I learn?"
I'm trying to ask:
"What can I actually build with what I know?"
That question changed the way I look at learning AWS.
I want to learn by doing small things
For example, if I learn about S3, I don't just want to know that it is a storage service.
I want to actually upload something, understand how it is stored and see how I can access it.
If I learn about EC2, I want to launch a small instance and understand what is happening instead of only reading the definition.
Even if the project is very small, I think doing it myself will help me remember the concept better.
Something else I am trying to understand
As a CSE student, I am also trying to figure out where AWS fits with the other things I need to learn.
I still have programming, DSA, DBMS, operating systems, computer networks and other subjects.
Then there are things like Git, Linux, Docker and cloud computing.
Sometimes it feels like there are too many things to learn.
So I'm trying not to treat AWS as a separate world.
Instead, I want to connect it with things I already learn in CSE.
For example:
Programming + AWS → Building and deploying an application
DBMS + AWS → Using a database in a cloud project
Computer Networks + AWS → Understanding cloud networking
This makes AWS feel less like another subject and more like a practical extension of what I am already studying.
My current goal
I don't want to call myself an AWS expert.
I'm just starting.
My current goal is much simpler:
Learn one concept → try it myself → make something small → understand what went wrong → repeat.
I think this approach will be more useful for me than collecting a lot of certificates without actually building anything.
One project I want to try
My first proper AWS project doesn't need to be something huge.
I would like to build a small web application and gradually put different parts of it on AWS.
Start with a simple application.
Then understand where the application runs.
Then add storage.
Then add a database.
Then learn how to control access.
Then learn how to monitor it.
Doing this step by step would help me understand why each AWS service exists instead of learning services individually.
What I have learned so far
The biggest thing I have learned is that being a beginner is normal.
There are a lot of AWS services, and I don't need to understand everything on day one.
I also don't want to be afraid of making mistakes while learning.
If I break something in a practice environment, I can learn from it.
For me, AWS is not about learning the maximum number of services.
It is about understanding how cloud technology can actually be used to build something.
This is only the beginning of my AWS journey.
Hopefully, after some time, I can come back to this article and see how much I have learned since writing it.
#aws # students #cloud computing
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