My son just completed an intensive CS course at a nearby gifted summer camp - the instructor was from the state flagship and used a syllabus from the intro course there. DS has also done several programming courses over the last several years through NUMATS, and has also done some substantial programming projects on his own.

He'll be starting high school in Sept (9th grade) and we're trying to figure out what is a logical next step for him in CS, which seems more and more a likely career path for him. His high school offers AP CS, but we're pretty sure he's already covered the content. Can anyone advise whether it is generally permitted/advisable to take the AP test without taking the course?

If he takes (or possibly if he can demonstrate proficiency in) the CS topics taught at the high school, he may be eligible for dual enrollment to take CS courses at the local U while still in high school. But we're also interested in hearing about other summer options - courses taught at a fairly advanced level (for a high school student). We'd appreciate your recommendations!

Have you seen the post Davidson forum threads on programming resources? AOPS, EPGY, and John Hopkins CTY all offer programming courses.

My eldest son took the AOPS introductory Python course when he was 9 (I think). He learned some things and attended all the lectures, but the object-oriented programming was over his head. Now he is two years older and wants to retake the course.

To answer a question in your post -- the College Board has no rule against taking an AP exam without enrolling in a course. Homeschoolers often self-study for AP exams. If your high school allows him to take the AP exam along with the other students doing so, there is no problem.

Thanks, Bostonian! Knowing our district, they are likely to resist letting him take the AP exam with the course, but knowing it is commonplace will be extremely helpful in advocating for that.

Also, thanks for the link - I tried but failed to find that on my own. But unfortunately, pretty much everything listed there is online and introductory level. I think what we're looking for now is a summer camp for kids who are already competent programmers.

Check with the HS guidance office about the possibility of internships with businesses that employee computer programmers. In our local school district they have a full time person that does nothing but arrange internships and job shadowing. Such opportunities can lead to many others in the business world.

Thanks, Old Dad, for another good suggestion - I will look into that too.

Amylou
My son has been dealing with the same problem. If your son takes your cc college entrance test he could take the cs classes there. You can avoid having to deal with your high school. He would not have to be enrolled in the dual enrollment program. Im not saying this for sure by you, but in our state you can.

I have a variety of controversial ideas... but first where is he at in math... this isn't limiting but my recommendations will vary depending...

For a summer CS activity, have you considered a home project? The best teacher is experience, and it also makes for great resume material.

Some suggestions:

- Write an iPhone game or Minecraft mod.
- Provide him your financial information (pay stubs, credit card statements, etc) and ask him to produce a data analysis on where your money is going (makes for a great lesson in microeconomics, too), and what can be done better.
- Build and secure a home server. Implement a recovery strategy (RAID, automated backups).

Thanks, Barbarajean! Taking CS at a CC is another interesting idea - we'll look into that. One concern about *not* doing this as dual enrollment is that he'd have to take a full class load at the HS in addition. We'll have to see how demanding the HS curriculum is (we're getting mixed messages on that) - it would be a problem if his HS grades suffered due to the heavy load. While he's an excellent student in all academic subjects, time management has not been a strength….

He just completed Honors Alg. 2/Trig. and earned A's. He'll take PreCalc this year. (I am still not sure what PreCalc is. Back in my day, we went straight from Alg. 2/Trig. to Calc.) He's also done a bit of calculus on his own, but not much.

Strong programming skills can enhance many other careers both for utility as well as the discipline of thought.

I've begun to think there is a largely overlooked brain drain where very gifted people are drawn into IT careers where they'll grind away making decent money but not having as big an impact as their potential might suggest. Though companies will pay well, the pay doesn't scale to output capabilities. A very intelligent experienced developer can produce 10 to 20 times as much code as an average newly trained programmer, but gets paid maybe twice as much. Should've seen the VP of HR pale a few years ago as I explained why I wanted to change three programming positions into two principal engineer positions.

Along the lines of Dude's suggestion, I would suggest your son look for an Open Source project that catches his passion and learn new technologies in that context and tap other developers for insight and help. It's skill building, application building (both kinds), and potentially career building as well as possible community service creds if his school tracks that.

Great ideas, Dude! I would have never thought of having him analyze our home finances!! (I am sure he'd have some great suggestions for spending our retirement savings…)

He has done iPhone apps and Minecraft mods, and will likely think of more he wants to do. He likes to post videos of him playing Minecraft (I know its a thing, but still trying to wrap my head around it), and he recently wrote a program to automatically smoothly pan the scene being recorded past specified guide points. Dh gave a hand with the algorithm but ds programmed and debugged the whole thing!

So yeah, a steady stream of engaging projects is great for learning. But maybe combined with a little formal instruction and contact with like minded peers….

Another great idea - I am so glad I asked about this.

But a dumb question - can you advise on how he might go about finding Open Source projects that align with his interests?

Here's a good place to start: http://sourceforge.net/

I'm somewhat of a technological dilettante (name the operating system, and I've probably supported it in some capacity or other), which has brought me into contact with a number of IT communities, and in my experience the open source community provides the best peer-to-peer support, bar none. If he gets stuck on something and needs help, there are forums out there that can be a great resource. So that's another benefit of going Zen's route.

Agreed, Sourceforge is the place to start. Just searching on Minecraft yields a ton of projects. I haven't worked on something at Sourceforge in quite a few years, and wow their search mechanism is really impressive.

I've always learned programming from doing; so, no suggestion on courses for that per se. But as an alternative, I would suggest supporting classes like discrete math, predicate logic, and more abstract computing courses like https://oli.cmu.edu/courses/free-open/computing-course-details/ . Other non-programming courses to look for would be like operating systems theory or object oriented design (if you can find it decoupled from a language.)

There is also so much available now online for free. My son took Aops Python in MS, AP (Java based) early in HS but is absolutely thrilled with the selection of MOOCs available through Coursera, Edx and Udacity. Courses he has completed have included, Intro to Programming; Udacity, Intro to Logic;Stanford, Algorithms:Crunching Social Networks; Udacity, Game Theory;Coursera/ Stanford and the University of British Columbia; Intro to Computer Science and Programming MITx; Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Computing; Berkely Edx; and Machine Learning; Coursera/Stanford.

I think he I now doing some Linux Course. There has probably been overlap but each course has held some unique value for him (or he wouldn't take them).

He is so thankful these courses are available to him.

Another option you might consider is letting your DS enroll in MOOCs. He won't get credit, but he can drop out with no penalty if a course is too difficult, too boring, or he's got too much school work to do. There are tons of CS courses from great institutions. Coursera offers CS classes from Stanford and Johns Hopkins while edX offers courses from MIT and Harvard. Some of the CS specialists here might take a look at what's offered and give you some suggestions that look good for your DS.