If I was to give myself an advice before I started my Cloud Journey,it will be what I'm about to tell you who's about to start or already on his/her cloud Journey.
Before you start your Cloud Journey or while studying for your Cloud Practitioner examination, learn GitHub. Learn Git commands,learn how to commit your commands to GitHub and also how to journal your progress especially your projects as you build them.
The reason I'm saying this is because, when you start your Cloud Journey and you want to start working on hands-on, you'll need somewhere to document what you're doing. GitHub amongst others are good places to have your repository which you can share with a recruiter or attach to your resume. With this,you begin to build up gradually until you begin to do full blown live projects which will still be documented in your GitHub and it helps you a great deal as a backup to your words when you say you have an experience.
I did a lot of hands-on when preparing for my CCP exam but I never documented them on GitHub because I didn't know how to use it then. The only place I have them documented which is still not sufficient enough is here on LinkedIn and the screenshots of the results of the hands-on in my Google drive. I really wish I knew better but I've made the mistake so you don't make it.
Then when you finish with simple hands-on and you're done with your examination and you pass,give yourself like 3 months break. Use that 3 months to learn Linux commands and python programming language. Not like 3 months is enough to help you learn something substantial in python, but if you're consistent everyday in that 3 months,you would have gathered some knowledge enough to help you start your Solutions Architect journey.
Like I said earlier, I really wish I knew these things,I would have done things differently. I hate to admit it but I'm all for saying my struggles,my strength,my fears, my mistakes,my celebrations, my low times in this tech journey if you've been following my journey with me here on LinkedIn long enough.
I was learning so many things at the same time which wasn't healthy but then,when you realize that a topic you're studying and you need to practice on requires you knowing python,docker, Linux and of course GitHub at the same time, you'll look so dumb and clueless on where to start. I already worked on my roadmap with all I have to do and in all, I can say I'm doing really well with knowing my way around GitHub especially with the commands and giving good reports especially commiting my repos from Gitpod but I still have my clueless days.
Please don't make my mistakes if you still have the time. Draft out a roadmap with this information and start from somewhere. You can apply this to other aspects of tech too if you don't belong in the cloud.
I wish you the absolute best on your journey.🤗