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First Java AP Computer Science Exam Complete
BlindSpy writes "Yesterday, Tuesday May 4th, high-school students all over the U.S. took the first-ever Advanced Placement Computer Science College Board exam based on Java. The exam is given as an opportunity for high-school students to earn college credit in programming. The test is based on whichever language colleges are looking for, which signifies a significant step for Java. In past years, the exam has been based on C++ (1 year) and Pascal (around 10 years)." If you took the exam, what were your impressions?
honestly, i didn't think it was that hard. If it was in C++ i would have spent much more time prepairing, but Java is so straight forward that I flew through the test without a lot of studying. Now, whether or not you have a decent teacher plays a lot into this. The questions weren't too hard or too complicated; even the more complicated ones had anwsers that could be eliminated after looking at it for a little while. I'm glad it was in Java-- C++ would have been a lot harder.
What's the story with C++ only being the test language for one year?
I took the test five years ago and it was in C++. Did they switch back to Pascal or not give the test for a couple of years? Or (as seems more likely to me) is the Slashdot summary wrong?
It was C++ three or four years ago too. So no, not one year.
The test was converted to C++ in 1999. This means that C++ was the language of the test for a full five years, not just the one mentioned in the posting.
I took it yesterday in the morning, as I think everybody did.
Overall, I think it was relatively easy (not to toot my own horn or anything)
Comparing to what i've seen of C++ and it's AP Exam, I _think_ the ease came mostly from the ease of Java itself, and the APPENDICES!
Most of the good heartly case-study code was included, along with a 'cheat-sheet' with method headers for the ENTIRE case study.
I'll get back to you in a month or two with my score, then we'll see how 'easy' it was
Error 407 - No creative sig found
The AP exams are not completely multiple choice. When I took it in '01, half the test was multiple choice, the other half was coding. We were supposed to use C++ to write functions that did matrix manipulations and sorts/searches using object-oriented concepts.
Needless to say, at the time, I was completely inept when it came to programming and thoroughly failed the exam. A few years later and I'm fairly close to graduating with my CS degree. Those exams are shit in my opinion.
Funny? He was being serious, people. They do say that, and FOR A REASON. Multiple choice questions are resued so that the College Board can compare how well people did year-to-year. The playing field should be level. Students who tried to cheat this way HAVE had legal action persued against them, and letters sent to the colleges where their scores were going to go saying "Sorry, no score for this kid, he cheated".
You want the tests to be fair, and that's what the College Board wants. They make a LOT of money off of tests being fair.
That doesn't sound too good for your school. This stuff was discussed in my second CS class: Data Structures and Algorithms. Kinda important stuff, actually. By Junior/Senior levels, we were doing stuff with computer vision, operating systems theory, AI, computability, etc. Graph Theory was part of the third class (Formal Systems and Anlaysis), which included relational theory (write your owm RDBMS!), DFA/NDFA's, and Context Free Grammars. Most of this stuff we had to code our own implementations of, so we got an understanding of the basics. Data Structures is first-year Freshman stuff.
The one who understands the difference between computer science and software engineering?
Would you hire a physicist to design a bridge? It would be insane.
Quit bitching about CS and go to the field you should be studying: engineering. Any kind of engineering. Good engineering practices are the same across the different types of engineering. But to expect computer science students to learn these practices is ludicrous. That isn't the point of CS, it shouldn't be the point, and I hope to God it never becomes the point.
The problem with this reasoning is that these are "invented facts" as opposed to "discovered facts." It's a piddling difference, but "invented facts" are not covered by the 17 U.S.C. 102(b) bar. Check out CASTLE ROCK ENTERTAINMENT, INC. v. CAROL PUBLISHING GROUP, 150 F.3d 132 (2nd Cir. 1998) where a court found copyright infringement in a compilation of trivia about Seinfeld. The argument was made that it was nothing but a compilation of uncopyrightable facts about the series, but the court said that, because the facts were created by the seinfeld writers, they were protected.
There was Cowboy Neal at the wheel of a bus to never-ever land.
No one that replied to you has mentioned it yet, so I will: the Computer Science AP test has two parts: A and AB. As you said in your post, you took the A part. The AB part, which is what I took yesterday, is more difficult and places strong emphasis on binary trees, linked lists, and stacks/queues.
All the reasons you dislike C++ are the reasons that I'm a fan. I use many languages, but C++ in particular gives me more leverage overall.
1. Operator overloading - mandatory for best use of templated functions and algorithms. If people make poor decisions with respect to what they overload, that's hardly a problem with the language. I would consider not being able to overload an operator a problem with the language.
2. References are required for any function that returns a "left-hand value." If that phrase does not mean anything to you, then you are not actually discussing C++ references at all, merely glorified pointers. Since left-hand values cannot be NULL by definition, your misunderstanding with regard to their purpose seems likely.
3. Memory mangement is identical to that of C. The addition of the new and delete operators is nothing remarkable - they just call malloc and free. They are also overrideable on a per-class basis if that is not good enough for you. If by "memory management" you mean "takes complete control of object lifetime" than no, C++ thankfully let's you do whatever you want with your objects.
4. Templates are very powerful. They allow with a single declaration the ability to generate code optimized for a given problem. If you are complaining that the mechanism is too powerful, well, some of us like the extra capacity.
5. As for multiple inheritence, I use it frequently. Some types of inheritence are unfeasible, some are unimplementable without substantial performance penalties, and most are simply doable. If you're having trouble, and your inheritance tree is sound, then file a bug report for your C++ compiler.
Genuinely, most of your complaints misrepresent C++ as something it's not, namely a high level language. If C is one step from assembly, then C++ is maybe a step and a half. That's by design.
If I want rapid prototyping, I'll use PHP or Python. I'm not sure what Java gets me other than a sandbox and some friendly exceptions when things go wrong. That's nice, but I don't write weak code, so all that padded insulation does me no good at all.
-Hope
Standardized testing is big business in America now, so let me clue you in.
1) The test has to start in a 30 minute time frame so that the East Coast is still in the testing room when the West Coast goes in (no emailing/ IMing/ text messaging answers across timezones).
2) Multiple choice answers are released like 5 to 7 years after the test was administered. Free Response questions are given to the teachers (tests are administered at your school) the day of the exam as they aren't reused.
3) What can happen to people who don't play by their rules? Try getting into college without taking the SATs (same people). None of your APs will count. Maybe you'll be sued, I don't know, but I DO know that your school's right to administer ANY AP EVER can and has been revoked.
So as much as you'd like to think "that's crap" it isn't-- at least not legally.
No sig for you.