Lesson 0.1
Design Before Implementation
Deciding responsibilities and interfaces before writing code is what makes a program changeable later. Design is a separate activity from coding, not a preamble to it.
Lessons and exercises
The bridge from AP CSA into honors work. It re-establishes Java fluency and then adds the habits the rest of the course assumes: designing before coding, testing deliberately, and explaining a decision in writing.
Lesson 0.2
Abstraction and Encapsulation
Abstraction hides how something is done behind what it does. Encapsulation is the mechanism: private state, public behavior.
Lesson 0.3
Testing and Debugging Workflow
A test plan is written from the specification, not from the implementation, so it can catch what the implementation got wrong.
Lesson 0.4
Technical Communication
Explaining an algorithm in prose is separately assessed in this course and is a genuine skill.
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