from Haley Zeng:
On APCS

Since course selection came out today I wanted to share some information regarding APCS that will hopefully help inform your decision on whether you want to apply for it. 

APCS is typically a highly oversubscribed course. The priority of acceptance (according to CS Teacher and wonderful human being Mr. Konstantinovich) goes something like this:
- The best of the juniors (teachers recommend these)
- Seniors who applied in junior year but were rejected
- The rest of the qualified juniors
- Seniors who did not apply in junior year
- Seniors who applied in junior year, were accepted, but decided to drop the course in phase 2 of course selection

Many of you are probably also considering taking AP biology or AP chem. These are both double period courses so you will not have enough space to take APCS at the same time as one of them, so you will have to pick one. The exception is if you are one of those smarties who took physics in middle school. In that case, you are allowed to drop physics junior year and take AP bio/chem in its place, so you will have enough space for APCS too. 

Taking APCS fulfills the 10tech graduation requirement, meaning you do not have to take a year long course in the tech department in senior year. Taking APCS is also a prerequisite for the senior CS electives (Software Development, Systems Level Programming, and Graphics). 

In APCS, you use Java and learn about object-oriented programming, sorting and searching algorithms, data structures, and a bunch of other fun stuff! The APCS course prepares you very well for the AP exam (you actually finish the AP curriculum first semester and move on to more advanced stuff second semester) and most people don't have a hard time with the test. 

According to Mr. Brown Mykolyk, he and Mr. Platek will probably be teaching APCS next year, and there will also be a third teacher (my completely unsupported guess would be Mr. Dyrland-Weaver). The teachers are still very much tentative and subject to change. 

If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

addendum by Mr. Holmes

It is  widely agreed that the way to select electives is by the teacher. That is, lots of people have found it better to take anything taught by a great teacher, rather than a subject they thought might prove useful from a good teacher. In my opinion the AP Comp Sci teachers Haley mentions are all great, not just good. But my opinion is not the important one. Rather, ask juniors and seniors you know. (My impression is that the AP Bio teacher(s) are widely admired, too, but I know little of bio or chem.)

On the other hand, if you don't get you a least a little thrill from having solved a comp sci problem, there is nothing in it to offset the pain of struggling to get there. If that is you, I'd recommend seeking that thrill in some other area, because the thrill is real. If yours comes from mind-melding with J.S. Bach or writing a sonnet, but not from finally understanding recursion, then look for a great teacher in another area. Life is too short to curse at recursion.