Studying for AWS Cloud Practitioner from the System Tray

When I started studying for the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam (CLF-C02), the material wasn't the problem. Finding time was. A study session meant opening a course, finding my place, and committing half an hour I rarely had.

What I did have were dozens of dead minutes a day: waiting on a build, the minute before a call, a test suite running. So I built AWS Flashcards, an Electron app that lives in the system tray with 130+ cards. Click the icon, flip a card or five, close it.

Weight your cards like the exam does

CLF-C02 splits its questions across four domains, and the split isn't even:

• Cloud Technology and Services: 34%
• Security and Compliance: 30%
• Cloud Concepts: 24%
• Billing, Pricing, and Support: 12%

The deck covers all four, and a domain filter lets a short session go straight at whichever one you're weakest on. Security and Compliance plus Technology and Services are almost two-thirds of the exam, so that's where review time pays off most.

Make it keyboard-first

If a micro-session takes more than a second to start, it doesn't happen. A click or the spacebar flips the card, keyboard shortcuts cover the rest, and each card gets marked Know it or Review. Shuffle mode keeps you from memorizing the order instead of the answers. Embla Carousel handles the swiping and transitions, so it also works fine with a trackpad.

Progress has to survive a restart

The whole point is short, interrupted sessions, so the app has to remember where I left off. Progress lives in localStorage, so the cards you know and the ones that need review are still sorted the next time you open it. It's not a spaced-repetition algorithm, but sorting cards into "know it" and "review" and re-studying the review pile gets you most of the benefit.

What I'd tell someone else studying

The tool mattered less than where it lived. Putting the cards one click away, in a place I already look a hundred times a day, turned studying from a scheduled task into something that filled gaps. If you're prepping for a certification while working full time, put your study material where your idle minutes already are.