Getting Started on AWS

The IAM mental model that makes "Access Denied" a useful signal instead of a wall. Users, roles, policies, and the one principle that ties it all together.

What EC2 is, what instance types mean, and when virtual servers are the right tool for your workload. Includes a full walkthrough to launch and connect to your first instance.

Go from "what is a table" to running a managed database. Create tables, write JOINs, build a social app schema, and deploy it to Amazon RDS.

Cache-aside, write-through, TTL jitter, and multi-tier caching patterns. Includes Rust code examples running on ElastiCache Serverless for Valkey.

What serverless means, how AWS Lambda works, and why you pay nothing when nobody's using your app. The whole concept explained clearly enough for Mama J.

The "works on my machine" problem and how containers solve it. Docker, images, ECS orchestration, and Fargate for running containers without managing servers.

Replace 62 console clicks with one deploy command. Build a serverless CRUD API (DynamoDB, Lambda, API Gateway) using Python CDK, then verify and tear it down.

Your React app can deploy and pass review while still shipping XSS, leaked secrets, and broken authorization. Walk four real attack layers and how to close each one.

How to think about system design without getting overwhelmed. Define requirements, build technical foundations, and learn the trade-off decisions that shape real systems.

Call your first model, manage conversations, connect your own data with Knowledge Bases, add safety with Guardrails, and build a working AI agent with the Strands Agents SDK.