Question about AP Computer Science

[sciencewhiz]

I tried posting this in the application and programming forum but didn't get much of a response

I have a chance to work with some high school students about designing simple robotics control systems. Can some of you give me an idea what is covered in AP comp sci?

I specifically need to know what language is taught and what the typical class would have learned by January. Also, is the class very specific to the language taught (c++), or does it teach general programming techniques that are applicable to all programming languages.

The programming would be done in PBasic (a basic dialect) on Parallax stamp2SX processors.

thanks for your help!

 

[randomlinh]

from my experiecne, it's geared around C++, but the techniques i think can be applied elsewhere.

also, by january, i learned to rocket jump Our AP Comp Sci teacher was new, and didn't really know what he was doin.

 

[bUnMaNGo]

sciencewiz: There are two different tests for the APCS class- A, and AB. You can get more info at [L]www.collegeboard.org[/L] I think... they'll tell you what material the class should cover and what not... back when I took the class back in 1996, they were still teaching it in Pascal. I believe in 1998, they switched over to C++. A good portion of the class (well, more like the first few weeks) emphasizes on design and documentation though, which was a biatch As in all introductory programming classes, my first line of code was writeln "Hello, world!"; or something along the lines of that I think the farthest that we got into with Pascal were function and procedure calls... I don't really remember that much, since this was about 4 years ago Oh yea, I took the AP Computer Science A class. Hope this helps.

 

[Pretender]

Yeah they switched over to C++ a couple years back. I'm in the class. It focuses mainly on C++ rather then programming in general. In terms of how much will be taught by January I'm not sure since i've never taken it before.

 

[sciencewhiz]

I was afraid that it was a C++ class. Shouldn't it be renamed AP C++? I took a look at the list of topics covered and much of the time is psent on classes and the such, which don't translate into what I would be having the students do.

Then again, most of the control system is MATH and you only need to know how to translate you mathematical algorithm into the language.