Computer Science, taught by Mrs. Taricco, gives us a hands-on introduction to coding, no matter what Computer Science background you come from. We start off the year with HTML and CSS, learning how to design and structure websites, including the one you’re on right now! After that, we move on to Java, where we dive into topics like loops, arrays, Boolean algebra, and iterations, topics that are covered in the AP Computer Science A Exam. These concepts are practiced through exercises and labs that help us understand how coding works in real-world situations, and give us a lot of hands-on learning opportunities to strengthen our knowledge on the respective topics. We also compete in the American Computer Science League (ACSL), which makes the class even more fun and challenging, combining both our Computer Science and Math skills in a competitive manner.
One of our Computer Science projects was called Line Art, where we created a program that draws straight lines within a rectangle shape. The lines connect one side of the rectangle to a perpendicular side, with their starting and ending points evenly spaced along the edges. I liked this lab a lot because it helped us practice using loop control structures while working with AWT Graphics. Though it was tedious at times trying to figure out the exact length of a line or number of loops you wanted to go through to make it work, this lab was a great way to display our coding skills in a visual format. And the final result was this very nice geometric pattern.
The Federal Tax Rate program was a program we had to make in order to calculate how much federal tax a person owes based on their income and marital status. The program required users to input their marital status (single or married) and income, which were used to determine their tax rate using the 2024 federal tax brackets. By applying the correct tax schedule, the program was able to calculate and display the final tax amount, rounded to the nearest penny. I liked how this program helped introduce us to the Scanner class, which handles user input in Java.