<p>So, because our school is seriously lacking in electives, my counselor signed me up for APCS since I had a gap in my schedule. My problem is that for APCS, pre calc and Java programming are both prereqs, and I've taken pre calc, but I've never taken Java. My coding skills are pretty basic/minimal. </p>
<p>I'm thinking about switching out since I have APCS next semester, but my friend (who has taken Java) is begging me not to. So my question is: as someone with no Java experience, will I be able to do the work and keep up? Could I learn Java basics before the semester ends (end of January)? What are some good books? (I'm going to order the Barrons for APCS, though)</p>
<p>A simple motivation is in college the corresponding course is half as long and doesn’t require any coding knowledge. If the average college freshmen with some CS interest can learn APCS from scratch in a semester you can in a year.</p>
<p>Now for the lack of coding ask the CS teacher how much she expects you to know beforehand and how much review she does. Once you know that you can probably get a textbook for the class by asking the teacher to borrow it and read the portions she expects you to know.</p>
<p>As for Java basics while codeacademy does not teach you the right syntax most of the concepts it has like conditional statements, loops, and recursion are the same major concepts in java. Codeacademy really does not take much time to go through the javascript section which would probably give you more than you need in concepts. Make sure to review java’s syntax but syntax is really just a place of a few pieces of memorization and the best way to learn it is after reading a short intro to write a few very simple programs on an IDE (which is where you write code) like eclipse. Eclipse and other good IDEs work like word in that they’ll underline java syntax errors and tell you what is wrong which makes them a good way to practice basic syntax.</p>
<p>I would take the class. You can do the codeacademy lessons to learn about logic but if you buy a book on java and read it, you should be fine. </p>
<p>For some more practice, also try: codingbat.com</p>
<p>A minor note: the correspondence to one semester isn’t universal. Here if you get a 5 you get credit for two semesters.</p>