Most tutoring near St. Johns County stops before AP Computer Science. Math centres teach math. The kids' coding franchises stop around age 14. That leaves AP CSA and AP CSP students with a teacher, a textbook, and not much else.
I write Java at a Fortune 500 company during the day, and I interview the people we hire to write it. So when a student asks why any of this matters, the answer is not hypothetical.
Which exam are you taking?
The two AP computer science courses are far less alike than the names suggest, and students regularly arrive unsure which one they are in.
AP Computer Science A — the Java one
Taught in Java, and as of the 2025-26 Course and Exam Description it covers four units:
- Using Objects and Methods — 15–25% of the multiple-choice section
- Selection and Iteration — 25–35%
- Class Creation — 10–18%
- Data Collections — 30–40%
The exam is 42 multiple-choice questions worth 55% and 4 free-response questions worth 45%, taken digitally in the Bluebook app.
Worth knowing if you are using older material: the 2025-26 redesign dropped inheritance, polymorphism, interfaces and abstract classes from the exam. Plenty of study guides still teach them. They are genuinely useful for college and for real engineering work — they are simply not what this exam asks any more, and time spent on them is time not spent on Data Collections, which is the largest unit.
AP Computer Science Principles — the broader one
Not a Java course. It covers how computing works more widely, and a large part of the grade is not an exam at all: the Create Performance Task, a program you build and document yourself.
For 2026 it is due April 30 at 11:59pm ET. Students lose marks on it for reasons that have nothing to do with the code — a missing written response, an undocumented function, a video that does not show what it needs to show. This is the part of CSP where working with someone who ships software for a living helps most.
How the sessions run
We work your actual assignment or an actual past FRQ, not a generic worksheet. I show the reasoning out loud, then hand the keyboard back and let you get stuck for a minute, because that is where the learning happens. You get a short written recap after every session.
Where I teach
Online for students anywhere in Florida — screen sharing works well for code, often better than sitting side by side, since you keep your own setup.
In person in St. Augustine.
Free Java material to start with
If you want to begin before booking anything, these are the guides I wrote for my own students. Start with Java for CSA.
- Python Zero to Hero — A Beginner's Guide
- Java Zero to Hero — A Beginner's Guide
- C++ Zero to Hero — A Beginner's Guide
Not affiliated with the College Board or with the St. Johns County School District. AP is a registered trademark of the College Board.