Im a sophomore right now and am thinking about taking AP comp sci next year. However, I dont know anything whatsoever about computers or coding, nor have a taken a class, so how would I prepare?. Math is my strong suit so Idk if the helps or not
Hi @Mercury100 - I’m a high school computer science teacher currently teaching AP Comp Sci A. I have a few students that have not had any programming experience (in a class full of students that are part of our 4-year Comp Sci program). They are bright students (have lots of other honors and AP classes) and are doing well, but they do have to spend a considerable amount time on homework to keep up. They do well with the content but they lack the experience that makes the coding projects go a bit faster - computational thinking skills.
So, I think you’ll be OK but since you have this summer, I would recommend working through some on-line courses (codeAcademy, etc.) to practice those computational thinking skills. You could either find a JAVA course (what AP Comp Sci is exclusively taught in) or start with something a bit simpler to learn, like Python, so that you can build some of those skills, learn some of the vocabulary of programming, etc. and that should make it a bit more “familiar” to you when you start the course in the fall.
Just another note because there is some confusion - there are now 2 AP computer courses - AP Computer Science Principles and AP Computer Science A (I teach them both). They are VERY different from each other. The info above is for AP Computer Science A… the Principles class, in my opinion, is much easier and is intended for “beginners”. It introduces the various topics in Computer Science and the AP exam is not language specific, it depends on what language your teacher decides to use. This school year is the first year the AP exam is being administered for that course.
Thanks @azmomof3 for your response. I should have specified I am taking AP Compsci A-Java so I’ll probably dedicate time in the summer to catch up and study Python and Java
For general knowledge, whether or not you intend to major in CS, the AP CS principles course may be a better introduction to CS. But you may just want to go through a college course which has been used as an example for AP CS principles, such as http://cs10.org/ , since the AP credit for CS principles probably is not worth much.