<p>Do you need to know prior information before you self study the subject?</p>
<p>bump please answer my question</p>
<p>It depends if your textbook assumes prior info 
if you get a comprehensive textbook that starts at helloworld you should be good to go.</p>
<p>I’m self learning the material as a junior right now with just the Barron’s prep book and it’s fairly easy if you continually do practice. I do have some prior experience though, so I could skip early chapters and get ahead. I finished learning and reviewing the material in a month. </p>
<p>Right now, I can complete the FRQ’s easily, though some multiple choice questions throw me off. I’d recommend using Barron’s test prep book to guide you, and then supplementing it with online resources (if you don’t have access to or don’t want to buy a textbook). In fact, if you like programming and you are fairly good at mathematics, learning to program shouldn’t be difficult. After all, many kids learn to program on their own at an early age by just reading online resources and following tutorials.</p>
<p>good practice: learn with a friend, then whenever one of you has an issue give it to the other person to debug. That way you get practice debugging code that is not your own and it trains you to follow the code better.</p>