Questions about CS and College

CS at the college level is about a lot more than programming. It’s very theoretical.

The best preparation for college-level CS is a thorough training in abstract, quantitative thinking - whether or not actual coding is involved. Mostly, this means doing well in your math classes. Although something like the SICP course linked above may help as well.

I have known many excellent programmers who never coded at all before their freshman year of college. I have known a few terrible programmers who were hacking assembly as pre-teens. The excellent programmers did well at math; the terrible ones, not so much. (Then again, most professional mathematicians are terrible programmers, but that’s another issue).

In sum, don’t worry about it. Do well in your core math classes; teach yourself a bit if you can. But you won’t be the only one with little programming experience when CS 101 rolls around. And CS 101 will likely take place at such a high level of abstraction that even the kids with APCS won’t have much of an advantage.