I set a 2025 goal to get more familiar with Google Cloud Platform (GCP). So I set my sites on the Google Cloud Certified Digital Leader certification.

tl;dr Attained 📜. I'm taking the rest of the year off ;) 🏖️.

Studying 📚

I used the GCP recommended study paths: Cloud Digital Leader Learning Path which I found interesting and informative. Coming from a background with a lot of AWS experience, I found a lot of the work was figuring out what X in AWS is called on GCP. So, I found this sheet very helpful: Compare AWS and Azure services to Google Cloud. For example Fargate is roughly Cloud Run on GCP.

In addition to the GCP resources I used my CloudAcademy subscription to take some practice tests in the Google Cloud Digital Leader Exam Preparation course. I didn't take the whole course I just used the practice exams as a little confidence booster.

Exam Experience 📝

The exam experience was pretty smooth. I got my normal pre exam jitters 🥶, but the process of launching and taking the exam was not bad. As always I used my pregame ritual of studying and exam day prep: Earning Certs to get me into the right mindset.

GCP Impressions ☁

GCP was interesting and I'm definitely intrigued. I would like to dive deeper into the Cloud Run/Fargate comparison and see if I can use terraform to create a web app like I do on AWS and measure things like, usability, cost, performance, etc.

They also have a good deal of AI/ML, not that AWS doesn't, but at the time I took AWS Cloud Practitioner AI wasn't all the rage yet. So, I can't say the AI offerings of GCP are better or worse than AWS, but they put them front and center in the learning path.

Conclusion ✔️

Be curious 🧐. Be a life long student and learner 📖. I like the certification path as directed line of study and checking ✔️ off the box of accomplishing something. At the end of the day though I think it's just about being curious and pursuing knowledge and interest.