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Course Review

Cloud Development Nanodegree

Udacity

Here is our in-depth review of Cloud Development Nanodegree, based on hours of rigorous testing and evaluation.

Updated: August 29, 2023

Bottom Line

This intensive, hands-on program will have you ready to build professional cloud-first full stack apps with AWS.

This Course is Great For

  • Hands-on Learning
  • Feedback and Mentorship
  • One-to-One Support

Fast Facts

Cloud Development Nanodegree

Cloud Development Nanodegree

Udacity

By Kesha Williams, Michal Kapiczynski, Gabriel Ruttner, Justin Lee, Ivan Mushketyk

💰 $249 per month 🕗 4 months at 10 hours per week
👩‍💻 Videos, Readings, Code Challenges, Graded Projects

#1 in The Best Online Courses for Learning AWS Fundamentals in 2024

This Nanodegree covers the majority of AWS used by real-world developers, and prepares learners to build cloud-first applications.

In this Nanodegree, you’ll complete four solo portfolio projects and receive a code review and personalized feedback. The projects include deploying a static website to AWS, building an image-processing application with Node and AWS, refactoring a monolithic app to a modern microservices application, and building a serverless version of the image-processing application.

Udacity’s hands-on approach is intense, but it works. Their emphasis on practice and real-world examples will prepare learners for actually building professional-grade cloud-first applications.

Before You Buy

Udacity provides Workspaces - in-browser virtual machines - so you can get started quickly without configuring local services. But if you use the Workspaces, we recommend supplementing with some local development as well.

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Why You Should Trust Us

Our course reviews are conducted by a team of technical professionals, course developers, and lifelong learners.

The lead of this project, Brian Green, has worked in developer education since 2009. He built the content development teams at Pluralsight and Udacity, implementing quality standards and tutorials to improve course quality and working with hundreds of authors to create courseware. Most recently, he built the product team at App Academy. As of writing, he estimates he has spent nearly a year of his life taking or reviewing online courses, on topics ranging from Web Development, Networking, Server Administration, DevOps, Cybersecurity, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence.

How We Tested

Evaluation Criteria

We reviewed this course using the following criteria:

  1. Outcomes: The course needs to cover the essentials for someone to start working with AWS Fundamentals in a professional capacity or on a professional-grade project. That means covering the right topics and not going beyond the scope of the course objectives.
  2. Learning Features: Real skill development happens with fingers on keys, particularly for learners moving from novice level. We looked for courses with more than just videos; exercises and projects were essential.
  3. Production Quality: The course should include polished and professional course materials. In 2024, the table stakes of even an average course are professional video production, uniform sound levels and noise-free audio, and course materials that are free of typos. Videos should also be captioned and transcribed.
  4. Real World Application: A great course teaches you enough to work on a production application. We looked for examples and best practices from professional experience, not just basic examples of how something works on a toy application.
  5. Support and Community: Learning is better together! We promote courses with thriving communities and rapid, helpful support for learners, and tend to rate courses lower if they lack community or if the community isn't valuable.

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