AP Computer Science

<p>AP Computer Science has just been offered at our school and I am considering taking the class.... I was wondering whether anyone would give me any ideas to whether they felt this class was difficult and an idea of the workload...</p>

<p>I don't believe the test is very hard although I am a computer buff.</p>

<p>im taking it this coming year (my junior year), and as a sophmore i took a Java class (and did very well in it). its taught by the same teacher so i think im gonna do good. it was a small class, and it was shared with the Java people and the AP Comp Sci java (about 12 java kids and 5 AP kids) we had to have separate lessons and it was all confusing but surprisingly it worked out really well... at least it did for my class, i didnt pay much attention to the AP kids (except for one guy... i liked him lol)</p>

<p>a question: is anyone else familiar with the ACSL? we did classroom competitions. my personal scores added to 38/40 which was 2nd best in the class after one of the AP guys (the one who i have a crush on......... lol). yea so i was wondering do they have that kinda material on the AP exam?</p>

<p><a href="http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/thinkCS/java/english/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/thinkCS/java/english/&lt;/a>
From what I've heard, this e-book covers the AP course.
Java isn't particularly hard once you get the hang of it. Just play around with it a bit.</p>

<p>(Disclaimer: I took the AP CS exam two years ago when it was still in C++ and I havn't done any ACSL competitions in two years, so I don't know about anything that has changed in that time period)</p>

<p>Very little of the ACSL type material (the written tests) is on the AP exam. You'll never be asked things like bit-string flicking, graph theory, prefix/infix/postfix, digital electornics, boolean algebra, LISP or anything crazy like that. What you will see is some of the "what does this program do question". You will also see questions on data structures (ie stacks, queues, search trees). When the AP test was still in C++, there wer "AP libraries" called apstack, apqueue, apvector etc that you had to know backwards and forwards - I don't know if these still exist in Java. Also, the Fish class (aka Marine Biology Case Study) was a big part of our exam. One of our FRQ's was writing a function to traverse through a linked list from the fish class and do something with it. The AP exam is based more on programming and the programming language and less on computer science theory. If you've done any of the ACSL programming competiitons, you'll be in good shape for the code intrepetations and writing parts of the tests. The ability to spot errors in code and to know how to write code fast comes in handy. In fact, two weeks after my AP test, we had a problem very, very similar to the linked list problem in our AP test at ACSL Nationals.</p>

<p>ok thank u</p>

<p>Thanks for the input</p>

<p>It was a relatively easy class/test (I only took Comp Sci A tho). I think Java is a pretty good language, I think you'll like it. Good luck.</p>

<p>:)</p>

<p>Comp Sci A is easy if you're one of those people who just "gets" programming. Comp Sci AB is more difficult, though.</p>

<p>AP Comp Sci classes are nice in that the programs you do are usually cumulative. Only rarely do you cover a topic that you never use again until the AP exam or your final. Once you learn a new strategy or syntax, you use it very often. It makes studying a lot easier.</p>

<p>^Agreed.</p>

<p>:)</p>