What comes after AP CS?

A parent on one of the home-school mailing lists I subscribe to asked my advice about computer science courses past AP CS (in private e-mail, not on the list).

My high schooler is looking for recommendations on possible paths beyond AP CS.  They could be online or classroom (SF bay area) or hybrid.  I am aware of the eIMACS University Computer Science 1 and 2 courses that use Scheme, but not sure about usefulness of learning Scheme.  Also, in eIMACS progression, these courses are pre-requisites for their APCS course, so I wonder if these may be suitable after AP CS.  Other than these I am aware of Udacity/Coursera, etc.

This is a hard request for me to answer, because my son’s journey through computer science has been highly idiosyncratic.  He has been programming for about 6 years and is fairly skillful now in Python (including doing some multi-threaded code, some work on GUIs, and optimization with Pyrex), but has not learned Java yet (he’ll get that this coming year, so he can take the AP CS exam, which is highly Java-specific).  My son did do a course using Scheme in 2009–10, and I think it was a valuable addition to his programming knowledge.  It wasn’t the eIMACS course, so I can’t comment on those courses.

Generally, learning very different programming languages helps students build “notional models” that are abstracted away from features of specific languages, making it easier for them to learn new languages in future.  Learning a LISP-based language (like Scheme) often provides a better understanding of recursion, linked lists, trees, and pointers than an Algol derivative like C, Pascal, or Java.  So the eIMACS courses may be useful even for someone who has done well in a Java course.

The usual advice after AP CS would be to take a data structures course, since the heavy load of Java syntax in AP CS usually means that the students have learned almost nothing about how to use data structures, just the syntax for them.  If the student is already familiar with lists, trees, and hash tables, then an algorithms course would be appropriate.  For students thinking of a computer engineering career, it would be best to take a computer architecture class that includes both C and assembly language programming.  (My son has had a little C and C++ programming on the Arduino, including some work with interrupts, but has not gotten into assembly language yet.)

A more theoretical path would suggest taking an applied discrete math course (combinatorics, mathematical induction, Boolean algebra), followed by analysis of algorithms.  I think my son will be taking applied discrete math (as well as picking up Java) in the coming year, since he still needs 2 more years of math in high school, and he has already finished single-variable calculus (the Art of Problem Solving online course, followed by the AP Calculus BC exam).

I’ve seen lots of links for online courses:

• Saylor free education: http://www.saylor.org/majors/computer-science/
• Coursera: http://www.coursera.org/
• Udacity: http://www.udacity.com/
• EdX: http://www.edx.org/
• ALISON: http://alison.com/
• MIT Opencourseware: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/
• Annenberg Learner: http://www.learner.org/
• Flatworld Knowledge: http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/
• Open Culture: http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses
• iTunes U: http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/
• eIMACS: http://www.eimacs.com/
• Brigham Young University: http://is.byu.edu/site/

I don’t have the time or the energy to look through all these (and undoubtedly many more) sites for suitable courses—especially as my son hates video lectures, so there is no point in looking at 95% of the online courses.  The Saylor courses look interesting, as they seem to rely mostly on reading and doing exercises, with only a few video lectures.  They also seem to follow the standard CS undergrad curriculum.

What I recommend for someone in the SF Bay Area is much simpler: take community college classes.  They are very cheap, and diligent students who come to every class can usually get in before the add deadline, even when there is a waiting list, because so many students stop attending.