I received the following email from a student. Being relatively new to Java myself I have no idea how to answer it:
“As you know, there was a big JAVA update mid in the year. The whole syntax has changed pretty much. I wanna know if the CSA class is updated with new syntax or still the same.”
Any suggestions on how to answer will be much appreciated!
Thank you!
Hi Bonnie,
Thanks for reaching out about this Java update! I looked into it, and found this video that summarizes the changes. The first 4 minutes were the most helpful.
It looks like the big syntax change is in the main method and the class header when there is only one class in a project. I don’t think either of these are a large impact on this course and curriculum. Most of our work is done in projects that have multiple classes, so the option to leave out the class header won’t be applicable. And, the change in the required syntax for the main method won’t impact the actual work our students do-- nearly every coding level provides the main method for students and they focus on the logic of methods that they are writing in the class files.
If I were responding to your student, I would share the video, and also point out that while our course is still using the older version of java that the update only really changes one line of code that is not focussed on in our content.
I will also pass this question on to other forum moderators to see if they have more information or a different perspective on the changes.
Best,
Lindsay
Hi @blestz, thank you for bringing this question up. Updates to the JAVA language roll out about every six months but the AP College board is still using the Curriculum and Exam Description from 2020. The syntax with the Code.org curriculum and the AP test will stay the same. The video that @lindsay.davis shared was very informative and I agree with her. Sending that to your student would be very helpful. I found this article to be very informative as well.
-Sam