Not sure whether to post this in H.S. life or here (since I’m the parent).
How time consuming is AP Computer Science Principles as compared to other AP courses? Of course, every school and teacher are different, but is this course generally seen as one of the easier ones? I’ve done a search on the forum and it does seem less technical than AP Computer Science A (which is not offered at her school). Is there any coding involved in the Principles class?
Daughter will be a sophmore next year and must choose between Tech Ed, Exploring Computer Science (both non-honors courses) or AP Computer Science Principles as a graduation requirement. This AP will be new to the school, so she doesn’t know anyone who can tell her how difficult or time consuming it is.
She will be taking AP World History, Honors Algebra 2, Honors Chemistry, Honors English 2, Spanish 3 and band (marching and jazz band have additional after school hours.) This year she’s doing AP Gov and all honors except for Spanish and Band. So far she’s made straight A’s but she does get stressed sometimes and needs some down-time. I imagine most of her friend group will take the AP class but I’m not urging her to pile on a lot of APs just for the sake of it, as I think her schedule will already be challenging for her. On the other hand, if there’s not a tremendous amount of coding homework she might enjoy it. Opinions?
AP CS principles is supposed to be an introductory overview of CS, suitable for all of prospective CS majors, non-CS majors who want to know how CS may related to other subjects, and those considering but not sure of being CS majors. Some programming is involved, but it should not be as difficult as courses for CS majors.
http://cs10.org is a college course that is one of the models for AP CS principles.
My daughter is a sophomore and has all the classes you mentioned except AP history and has calculus for math. For her it is the easiest class she has. I believe it has coding but she has no problem with and isn’t planning a computer science career. It’s the second year of the course and it seems her teacher gives them due dates in advance. She has all her work done through March 14. In her class there is all four classes represented. The requirement was honors algebra but kids in vector calculus take it too.
My D18 took AP CS-P last year as a junior. I thought it was a nice, light introduction to computers and networking. There was some simple Javascript coding towards the end (in a controlled online environment). D18 ended up with a high A with minimal effort even though she had no prior programming experience.
AP CS-A is totally different. D18 didn’t take it … but from looking at the sample tests, it’s a real programming class.
a little bit of coding but nothing difficult. not a difficult course at all, not a lot of material, not hard
It’s divided into different units with lots of hands on work. There’s some coding but the point of the class is to show students that computer science is a lot more than coding. It’s considered easy compared to other APs but of course more rigorous then a regular class and very well thought out.
Thanks, everyone. I’ll pass all this feedback and info on to my daughter. I’m sure she’ll find it very helpful in making her decision!