AWS learnings from a beginner

I have been learning AWS for the past month and it has been a lot of information. I am following along in a course where employees are teaching through videos and it seemed as if the features to AWS never stop coming! As I was watching the videos though I started to pick out information that looked applicable to my current projects and things that I have been doing by hand that AWS automates for you. What started as just learning for the sake of a certification became fascination with certain products. That was something I didn't expect. I hope to implement AWS into my future projects and use its services as they apply.

I recently completed a project to combine multiple services from AWS using their student free-tier trial console. It was simple but informative. I took csv data and put it into an s3 bucket, an efficient way to store all your objects. Then to manage more csv data coming in I connected a Lambda function to handle when new files were added to my bucket and sort them to the correct file. It was so cool to see those two platforms work together and how seamless it was inside of the AWS console. I have been used to working with my own managed servers and bringing data in, writing functions to alter it, and then shipping it off to a database where I created all the tables and managed it. With Athena though I could run queries on my S3 bucket folder with the csv data and it behaved just like a database query.

I have a lot more to learn about each of these features but a simple project like this helps me see how fluid the AWS console is and how it is able to manage much of the infrastructure for you. The learning curve is tough but I will keep trying to familiarize myself with these skills! I offer a voice of encouragement to other beginners out there as well!