Student Cloud Basics ☁️

Welcome to your very first step into cloud computing. If you have never used AWS, never written a Lambda function, and think "S3" sounds like a car model — you are in the right place.

The Big Idea

On your laptop, you are used to:

• Writing Python scripts that save files to your hard drive
• Storing data in JSON or SQLite files
• Running a local web server on localhost:5000

In the cloud, the same concepts exist, but the names change:

Experiments in This Track

1. S3 File Writer

Goal: Write a text file — but instead of your hard drive, save it to Amazon S3.

What you learn:

• What is AWS Lambda (serverless code execution)
• What is Amazon S3 (cloud object storage)
• How permissions work (IAM policies)

2. DynamoDB Counter

Goal: Replace a local JSON file that stores a counter with a real cloud database accessible via HTTP.

What you learn:

• What is DynamoDB (NoSQL database)
• What is API Gateway (the "front door" for your cloud functions)
• How to build a serverless API

What You Need

• A PyRun Cloud account (we handle all AWS credentials for you)
• Curiosity
• Zero prior AWS knowledge

Let's start with the S3 File Writer →