In AP Computer Science Principles A, the class was tasked to make an app as one of their projects. In the class, students learn Binary, Python, Hexadecimal, and STRING. The task of this project was to use Python coding to create an app. So far, the class has made three apps. 

The focus on the first project was to use event statements to make something happen. Event statements are when the user does an action like click a button and then an event happens.

Senior Marty Ratchford in his first project made a fish quiz. Junior Jeffery Joyal made a violin app which allowed the player to play the violin. 

“Through hard work and sweat and plenty of milk, I was able to play (violin) on the computer. It was very difficult but I made it happen,” said Joyal.

The second app was functions and decisions. Functions are when the programmer has repeated code in a work and to save some time the programmer can put the repeated code into a function and then anywhere programmers need to do that code they can just call the function. 

For the second project, junior Jack Winkler made a sandwich maker. When the app is done running, the app is designed to rate the sandwich 1-10. Junior Ryan Mcaa made a wizard app. The app was designed to create a scenario and then choose three spells to do. 

“It was an enjoyable creative endeavor which allowed me to both learn important principles of computer science and have fun by accessing my creativity. I think it really helped develop my computer science skills such as creating loops and lists,” said Winkler.

The third app focuses on lists and databases . Lists and databases are things that hold information that the programmer can call and it can display. A list can be like [0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7] which can be helpful when programmers need to pull a random number 0-7. For the app I used the top selling video games database and the user can input the publisher and it will show up with their games and what their sales are. 

“The ability to make apps is cool and to be able to learn progressively with each unit building on top of each other is nice. I think students should take AP Comp Sci Principles if they like computers and a challenging class, ” said instructor,  Mr. William Eckard.