Just thought I'd pop in and say hi, since I've just signed up here.

Name: Well, what do you think I have an alias for?
Age: At this time of writing, 17.
Occupation: Student
Hobbies: Programming, gaming, and doing random backflips in public (that last one was a joke).

So yeah, I'm a 17 year old male studying (at AS Level, at a college in the UK) Computing, Physics, and Double Mathematics (right now mechanics and pure mathematics are the subjects I study). I am fairly laidback, but I get the job done when it's my turn to work, and I'm also quite eccentric (so don't mind me when I say something odd).

That is all. Dismissed.

Cool. Welcome.

I did computing at college too (dont think my exact course exists any more though) . Got my A2 last summer, now at university in Dundee doing Applied Computing and loving it.

if you want a head start on uni, get to grips with:

OOP concepts, and experience putting these into practice with Java or c++ is helpful as well as knowing concepts like searching and sorting algorithms, linked lists, trees, stacks, queues (and how to actually make these e.g the advantages/disadvantages from a coding point of view of creating a stack using lists, or using an array)

Are you more into the mathsy theoretical side or the actual coding, practical side of things?

I like my course, its mainly the latter as opposed to just plain computer science.

I'm a bit of both really, but leaning a bit more to the practical side. I often like to dive straight into code, but then a lot of the time I do put some planning/thinking into certain things. I often find myself going back weeks later and saying "I could have done better" and changing a given peice of code (e.g. making it more efficient, making it do a better job, etc). I am much more of a do-er than a thinker. I do enjoy the theory behind programming aswell, however.
I love programming. In addition to computing, I also study Physics and Mathematics (double) at college.

You say that you did an A-Level in computing. How was it for you? My tutor has told me that this year is the first where AS students study the new syllabus. Aside from other things, his main emphasis was on the fact that the new A-Level computing syllabus has a lot more programming. I get some fairly comprehensive tutorials, though most of the time it's the practise, and not the outright computer science (theory) that goes into it. I get 6 sessions a week, 3 of which are mainly programming, the other 3 of which are theory; I have two tutors, one of which covers 3 of the programming sessions, 1 of the theory sessions, and the other of which covers the remaining two theory sessions.

I know a few sorting and searching algorithms, but right now I don't know much about the other things you mention. I understand that OO puts an emphasis on data and how it is managed, putting things into classes and such. I do use an OOP language (VB.NET, at the moment, since it's the main language covered in the first year of my course); after a while I intend to go onto C, C# and Python, though I could probably fit some C++ in there aswell, given how similar C/C++/C# all are (or at least, according to my own impression; I don't know if I'm right or wrong). One step at a time though.

Welcome to the community!