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AP Computer Science Principles

About This Course

A full year of computer science that starts from nothing. You will write modern C#, create console programs, draw and animate with Raylib, complete the Create performance task, and prepare for the AP exam. No prior programming experience is assumed.

You will use two kinds of programs throughout the course. Console apps make input, arithmetic, and algorithms easy to inspect. Raylib apps turn the same ideas into shapes, motion, interaction, simulations, and games.

Course Content

Each quarter is divided into parts, and every part ends with a short quiz. Parts with no links yet are planned but not published.

Quarter 1: Foundations

Arrays and counting from zero, length and safe access, walking through an array, Raylib Lab 6, and the Quarter 1 review and checkpoint. Not published yet.

Quarter 2: Abstraction, Algorithms, and Data

Writing your own functions, parameters, return values, scope, refactoring, and Raylib Labs 7 and 8. Not published yet.

Your first scoped build, with a planning gate before any code is written and a share-out at the end. Not published yet.

Linear search, binary search, sorting and algorithmic efficiency, and problems that cannot be solved exactly — heuristics and undecidability. Not published yet.

Binary numbers and what bits can represent, the limits of bits, compression, metadata and correlation, cleaning and bias at scale, and Raylib Lab 11. Not published yet.

The long build: a proposal gate, six sessions of work against a plan you wrote, then testing and a share-out. Not published yet.

Quarter 3: The Create Task, Systems, and Impact

The AP Create performance task, from start to submission — your program, your video, and the written responses that go with it. Not published yet.

How the internet actually moves data: packets, protocols, routing, redundancy, and parallel computing. Not published yet.

Beneficial and harmful effects of the same innovation, the digital divide, bias, crowdsourcing, legal and ethical concerns, privacy, and malware. Not published yet.

Pulling the year together before exam preparation begins. Not published yet.

Quarter 4: Exam Preparation

A half-length timed multiple-choice set, weighted the way the real exam is, then a review by Big Idea that gives you your own reteach list. Not published yet.

The written response questions against your own Create task program, a full timed set under exam conditions, then marking your own work and a partner's. Not published yet.

Four sessions spent where the exam actually puts its points, plus one on whichever gap the diagnostic named for you. Not published yet.

The question types that cost points for reasons that have nothing to do with computer science: multi-select, reading passages, and the reference sheet under time. Not published yet.

Full-length practice under exam conditions, and the last look at what it turns up. Not published yet.