There's a really interesting Google tech talk about this from a company who has been developing a system to harvest wave energy by placing giant floating "snakes" at the surface. It turns out that they are aiming to harvest in sea depths where the wave energy does not come from the tides, but instead from the wind blowing on the water, so indirectly it's "wind" energy.
They address optimum places to locate wave farms (sea depth, wind constancy) and even did an environmental impact study. If all the wave energy that is feasible to harvest is harvested, it could completely offset the CO2 emissions from US electricity production.
Let's not confuse programming -- the practice of using a computer language to do one's bidding -- with computer science -- the more generic, language agnostic study of computers. That's why the exam is called AP COMPUTER SCIENCE and not AP Programming. I wouldn't say that the use of Java on the exam is a great boom for Java per say, just a recognition that it has many features that are useful, and not available with previouis languages in this exam setting.
I think this misconception causes many students to inappropriately major in CS in college because "they like programming", or "they like computers". And some of them, from my experince at engineering school, end up in other majors as a result. Not all though, but enough for me to feel I should comment...
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There's a really interesting Google tech talk about this from a company who has been developing a system to harvest wave energy by placing giant floating "snakes" at the surface. It turns out that they are aiming to harvest in sea depths where the wave energy does not come from the tides, but instead from the wind blowing on the water, so indirectly it's "wind" energy.
They address optimum places to locate wave farms (sea depth, wind constancy) and even did an environmental impact study. If all the wave energy that is feasible to harvest is harvested, it could completely offset the CO2 emissions from US electricity production.
Let's not confuse programming -- the practice of using a computer language to do one's bidding -- with computer science -- the more generic, language agnostic study of computers. That's why the exam is called AP COMPUTER SCIENCE and not AP Programming. I wouldn't say that the use of Java on the exam is a great boom for Java per say, just a recognition that it has many features that are useful, and not available with previouis languages in this exam setting.
I think this misconception causes many students to inappropriately major in CS in college because "they like programming", or "they like computers". And some of them, from my experince at engineering school, end up in other majors as a result. Not all though, but enough for me to feel I should comment...