CS 470 Full Stack Development II

Marc Anthony Aradillas
June 2025
CS 470 Final Reflection Presentation Video: Watch on YouTube

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💡 Experiences and Strengths

CS 470 has been pivotal in shaping my skills as a full stack developer with a strong understanding of cloud-native technologies. Through this course, I learned how to containerize applications using Docker and orchestrate them using Docker Compose. I deployed a monolithic MEAN stack application into a serverless environment and successfully integrated AWS Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, and S3.

Key Skills Acquired

• Creating and deploying RESTful APIs using AWS Lambda
• Configuring CORS, permissions, and IAM policies for secure cloud communication
• Using Docker to containerize apps and manage isolated environments
• Hosting static websites on AWS S3 and managing endpoints via API Gateway

Strengths as a Developer

I’m confident in architecture patterns for scalability and maintainability, CI/CD integration, and cloud-based debugging. I’m prepared to pursue roles such as:

• Cloud Developer
• Full Stack Engineer
• Junior DevOps Engineer

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🚀 Planning for Growth

Cloud-native architecture enables cost-effective and scalable solutions. Here's how I'd plan for growth:

Microservices & Serverless Efficiencies

• Modularizing services (e.g., auth, Q&A, analytics) for independent scaling
• Serverless functions provide cost-effective execution and auto-scaling

Scale & Error Handling

• Use throttling (API Gateway) and monitoring (CloudWatch)
• Retry logic and Dead Letter Queues (DLQs) for resilient Lambda operations

Cost Considerations

• Serverless: Great for low/moderate use; pay-per-execution
• Containers: Better for constant high-load services; reserved instance pricing

Pros & Cons

Serverless

• ✅ Auto-scaling, cost-effective, no server management
• ❌ Cold starts, timeouts, vendor lock-in

Containers

• ✅ Customizable, good for long-running services
• ❌ Requires orchestration, more maintenance

Elasticity & Pay-for-Service

Elasticity ensures demand-based scaling. Pay-for-service ensures cost control. Together, they provide a sustainable growth path for cloud apps.

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🎯 Conclusion

This project enhanced my real-world development and deployment skills on AWS. I leave this course confident in my ability to:

• Design scalable full stack applications
• Secure and monitor cloud-native solutions
• Articulate and present technical concepts effectively

This is now a cornerstone artifact in my developer portfolio.