Last updated on August 31, 2022
I can’t believe it’s been over a month since I’ve posted an updated. I know it’s a cliche, but dang, time moves fast. I haven’t made measurable improvments on the Cloud Resume Challenge, but I haven’t been idle, either.
First, I spent a couple weeks skilling up on Ansible. I’d tested out Puppet when it was relatively new, quite a few years ago, so Ansible wasn’t hugely different. It also wasn’t all that different than many of the scripts we’ve used at work for many years to automate management of our Linux systems. The advantage, though, is how much easier Ansible makes it to not only configure, but to ensure the correct configuration and eliminate drift. Working on Ansible now was helpful in two ways – it was a tool I felt I needed to be able to demonstrate competency with for the current job market, and it’s something I can implement right now in our environment at work right now. That implementation is in progress, and going well, I think.
Second, I needed to work on some of the skills needed for the backend of the Cloud Resume Challenge. While my python has been serviceable, I decided some more formal training would helpful, and it has been. I feel far more comfortable with the language, and I was able to get some hands-on experience with the boto3 library (which is used to manage AWS resources). I also needed to work on understanding how to use AWS Lambda. I had a good idea how it works in theory, but I’d never tried to use it in practice. That’s been the work of the past week, and has definitely made me glad I spent some time work on python and boto3 first. The combination of Lambda functions to automate tasks, and EventBridge to schedule and trigger them is really pretty cool – it’s both pretty simple to set up, and really powerful.
As soon as I’m done working through the Lamda course, I’ll need to work a bit on using REST APIs, and then I think I’ll be ready to build the back end for the Cloud Resume Challenge. Part of me wishes I were moving a little faster through this, but everything I’m working on is helping me build such a useful base of skills, that I think it’s wiser to do the work now rather than rush through just to have something done.
Originally published 3/28/2022
Be First to Comment