Udacity Cloud Developer Nanodegree Review 2024: Is it Worth it?

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What exactly is a Cloud Developer Nanodegree?

This Nanodegree is a set of courses designed to help you land a job as a Cloud developer. You will undergo various projects and quizzes to do so.
Here, you will learn to build and deploy production-ready full-stack apps at scale on AWS, an essential skill for advancing your web development career.
This Nanodegree is similar to a regular degree with a much smaller timeline of 3 to 6 months.

Will I get a job as a Cloud Developer?

Getting an entry-level job as a cloud developer requires you to have a certain skill-set.

In this Cloud Developer Nanodegree program, you will learn to develop and distribute applications on the cloud using a microservices’ architecture with Kubernetes, and serverless frameworks. 

You will undergo various projects that will outfit you with the most cutting-edge cloud computing skills so that you can help companies innovate and reduce costs.

Udacity’s course aims to get graduates employed. So they help you in preparing for job interviews with their career services which include LinkedIn Profile Review, Resume Review, CV Reviews, etc.

With such exposure, you are most likely to land a job within the first 6 months of your Nanodegree. 

Also Read: Udacity Success stories

Here are some additional features that Udacity offers

Udacity Features

Apart from the curriculum, Udacity offers some extra services which make this Cloud developer Nanodegree worth it.
These services are as follows:

Mentorship

The best part of Udacity is that you get a mentor who guides you through the entire program. Your mentor will be there to answer any questions and doubts you face in the course. He/She is responsible for reviewing your projects and giving feedback.

Trust me, feedbacks really helps.
Mentors know how challenging some of the concepts can get and are in their corner to cheer you up to keep you motivated from start to finish.

Career Services

Udacity wants you to get hired. So they help you in preparing for job interviews and writing a good resume.

An expert will have a look at your resume and LinkedIn profile and gives improvement recommendations.

Also, Udacity shares your portfolio with its partnered organizations.

Community and discussion forums

Udacity has a community feature where you can talk with other peers from your batch.
You can even ask questions in the group or answer to other students.
Here you feel like sitting in a classroom.

Also Read: 10 reasons why Udacity is worth it

Let’s check how much Udacity charges for such advanced features in this Udacity Cloud Developer Nanodegree Review

Graduation certificate

Having a certificate from a reputed Massive open online course is always an advantage for you. After the completion of the Udacity Cloud Developer Nanodegree, you will receive a decent graduation certification from them.

Most employers and potential recruiters are aware of the value of the content provided by Udacity and other big online educational platforms.

Udacity Cloud Developer Nanodegree Pricing

Cloud developer Nanodegree comes with two pricing models.

1. Fixed-price ($1200 for 4 months)
2. The monthly price of $399/month

The fixed price model comes with some benefits as you pay a bit lesser price. The discounted price comes up to $309/ month. So you get to pay a total of nearly $1200 upfront.

You can also go for the monthly pricing if you think you can complete the Nanodegree in a lesser time(up to 3 months). 

The pricing mentioned above could vary a bit as Udacity sometimes .runs discounts on their Nanodegrees.

Pre-requisites for Cloud developer nanodegree on Udacity

Now, let’s know the Prerequisites for this Nanodegree in this Udacity Cloud Developer Nanodegree Review.

This course is an advanced Nanodegree and requires you to know some pre-requisites. Those are 

• Web Development (HTML, CSS)
• Object-Oriented Programming
• Linux Command Line Basics

Don’t worry if any of these goes outside of your current set of skills, Udacity has some free courses that act as pre-requisite to advanced courses.

While writing this Udacity Cloud developer review, I was surprised by the content Udacity is offering. 

Let’s discuss the entire syllabus in detail.

Must see -> Udacity Become a Cloud DevOps Engineer Nanodegree Review 2022: Learn AWS Cloud DevOps from Udacity

Syllabus of Udacity Cloud Developer Nanodegree

The entire Nanodegree program is divided into 4 courses, each followed by a project. 

Couse 1: Cloud Fundamentals

In this course, you will be introduced to computing power, security, storage, networking, messaging, and management services in the cloud. In other words, this course will give you a taste of the fundamental concepts of cloud computing.

Along with this, you will get hands-on experience with tools offered by Amazon Web Services(AWS). 

Have you ever deployed any website on the server before?

If not, then by the end of this course you will deploy your first website on AWS. 

Cool, Isn’t it?

The project itself lets you Deploy a Static Website on AWS

To deploy your first website to AWS, you will be creating a first S3bucket, configure the bucket for hosting, and then secure it using IAM policies. 

The next step is to upload website files to the bucket and with the help of Cloudfront, speed up the content delivery. 

Now access your website through a browser using the unique S3 endpoint.

Course 2: Full Stack on AWS

With the help of modern cloud architecture, explore more about full-stack applications including their designing and deploying. 

In this course, you will build a multi-service cloud stack. 

This course will cover most of your fundamental concepts along with some real-world problems. 

This course is structured to make you understand design aspects and tools to help you maintain your application. 

Time to create your own Instagram on AWS. 

In order to make your own Instagram, you will have to use Node.js/Express to develop this app. This project will let you create a cloud-based application where you can upload and filter images.

Isn’t that cool?

Let’s move to the next course

Course 3: Monolith to Microservices at Scale

Microservices today is the default mode of developing and deploying applications at scale. 

The microservices architecture can scale an application to a large system and is good for continuous integration and delivery. 

This course details how to develop and deploy microservices. 

You will get to know more about microservice architecture patterns, independent scaling, resiliency, service replication, service registration, and discovery. 

Ultimately, you will learn to design and build an application using a microservice architecture.

The next project is to Refactor Udagram app into Microservices and deploys using Kubernetes

Reusing the existing Udagram application, you will convert and extend it into a microservice architecture. 

Once the application is divided into smaller services, you will containerize it and deploy it to a Kubernetes cluster

Later you will have to interpret performance, usage, and logs to solve real problems. 

COURSE 4: Develop & Deploy Serverless App

In this course, you will get to know more about serverless technologies. 

Here you will learn more about features like running a cloud infrastructure. 

As Serverless technologies are gaining popularity to their increased speed of development and cost reduction of running a cloud infrastructure. 

The project in this course lets you create a Serverless Application

It’s time to create an Instagram-like serverless service for uploading, listing, and filtering images. 

Firstly, you will be building serverless REST APIs using API Gateway and AWS Lambda, a stack of serverless technologies on AWS. 

Later you will implement an API to interact with this application, store data in AWS DynamoDB, S3, and Elasticsearch, secure your application with authentication, and deploy to Amazon Web Services using a Serverless framework.

Last but not least is the capstone project where you will be putting all your domain knowledge learned so far.

To achieve your cloud development-related career goals, this project will play an important role in building your portfolio. 

In this project, you’ll build an application on AWS based on certain predefined criteria. 

Learners will define the scope of the project, come up with a feature list, and decide which AWS services to use to meet availability and performance criteria.

Cloud developer nanodegree certificate

You get a similar certificate upon graduation.
This certificate is not accredited by any university, but is definitely a way to show recruiters about your qualification.
Add it to your resume or LinkedIn profile to lure employers.
You can either view or print or share your certificate through your Udacity account

Check this out -> My Experience: Udacity Review 2022| Are Nanodegrees Worth $1400?

Is Udacity Cloud Developer Nanodegree Worth it?

Preparation for an entry-level job as a cloud developer certainly requires you to have some set of skills. 

Looking over the course syllabus, I think Udacity will equip you with the required knowledge to embark on your journey as a cloud developer. 

Overall, this is a very good program that will allow you to get out of your comfort zone and will enable you to build actual applications using a wide variety of tools and services offered by AWS (Amazon Web Services).

I say Yes to this Nanodegree program. 

Reviews from other graduates of Udacity Cloud Developer Nanodegree

Chidiebere Nwachukwu

Data Scientist | Machine learning Engineer | Software Developer | Computer Engineering student

★★★★★

Finally bagged the Udacity Cloud Developer Nanodegree!
My Nanodegree experience was very exciting, challenging, and rigorous at the same time.
It was a great learning journey of 4 months that introduced me to a lot of new and interesting technologies:
– Developing well-structured applications with TypeScript.
– AWS cloud computing solutions for building secure and scalable cloud applications.
– Microservices at scale.
– Containers using Docker.
– Orchestration with Kubernetes
– Serverless application using AWS lambda
Built a serverless to-do application for my capstone project, and it was awesome.

Thanks to Information Technology Industry Development Agency, ITIDA, TIEC for providing such a great opportunity to learn through the AAL program.