I Built My First AWS Network with Terraform. Here's Everything That Went Wrong.

Short summary

Developer documents a realistic Week 1 learning journey building AWS infrastructure with Terraform, including actual debugging sessions for 403 permissions errors, 400 parameter mismatches, and security group misconfiguration. Key lessons: understand the difference between authentication and validation errors, read terraform plans carefully as code reviews, and verify resource associations rather than assuming naming conventions. The error-driven narrative emphasizes practical cloud debugging methodology over idealized tutorials.

• •Real debugging: 403 auth errors, 400 parameter errors, missing route table associations, security group misconfiguration
• •Error differentiation: 403 means permissions denied, 400 means invalid request—two different failure modes requiring different fixes
• •Best practice: read terraform plans like code reviews, use parameterization to test fixes, verify resource associations explicitly

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