APCSP Notes for Alumni Panel

Colin

Took CSP twice

Says you have to keep a positive attitude

Anthony

Went from CSA to CSP

Andrew

Took intro to CS, then CSA

Transferring to UCSD (hopefully)

Mabel

Going to UCSD

Took 2 trimesters

Alicen

Going to UCLA for congativitve science computing

Dtya

Computer Science major

How did you realize what you wanted to do and how did this class help with that?

Look outside your classmates

Taking the intro class hooks you/ you like it (2x)

Didn’t originally like the class but doing knows it’s important for aerospace

COGSIN major (psychology+CS); CS gave the technical background for it

Always interested in CS from a young age, took it more seriously in middle and high school and APCSP helped with that

What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced?

Getting started; remember there is a solution on the internet(2x)

Clashing egos; CS egos are not the kindest people

Theory behind CS; in college it is not structured the same

Finding motivation; someone will always be better

Temptation to cut corners, not everything is a checkbox for points

Starting in a new area of CS

Are there any project based learning scenarios in college CS classes

You do only 2; in your freshman and senior years

PBL then tests; split between

Not as much in class but you can work in smaller groups

Dealing with other people is hard

Have you applied CS in your major if you are not majoring in CS

You can write scripts to automate some stuff and will serve you well (2x)

Advanced calculations

3D printing

Advanced calculations and math calculations

Jupyter notebooks can be used for technical papers

Stats majors and psychology need CS

For existing college students, have you had a job with a school or professor

Be different for references

You can be a bus driver

Code Ninjas

Northrop Grumman; technical drawing revisions visualizing flight data and cybersecurity, scripting for staffing spreadsheet (x3)

LG; APIs, internal APIs, html, python

APCSA got them the internship

Church group

Did you ever focus on personal projects alongside school

Yes, important to get a job, have 2-3

Visual projects are great

Pathfinding algorithms

Graph theory

How do you use CS in mechanical engineering

Isolate and cut out extra text thats attached to models

Manipulation of commands

Did you do any Del Norte Computer science clubs

Robotics

Tips to get into a internship

Companies will higher in september or november the year before

Projects and clubs; there are a lot of people in stem

Referrals are very helpful

What prior experience do code ninjas need

Good with kids

Takeaway

Computer science is important to a lot of majors and can be useful in many ways like automating tasks and advanced math. There are a variety of ways you can realize that you want to major in computer science. Internships are good and to get one you should try and get referrals