I had never seen an AP CS test before... this test to me was almost nothing 'computer science' and almost all 'have you seen Java and OOP language structure before'. I had no idea that is what is being put forth to hs students as "CS".

There are certainly some Java details assessed, and arguably more than there should be, but the exam does assess the ability to use variables and write expressions; to write loops, including nested loops; to write conditional statements, including nested and complex conditionals; to write methods that call other methods; to organise data and behaviour using instance variables, methods, and inheritance; to store and process sequential and two-dimensional data; and questions in the corresponding multiple-choice section are likely to briefly address sorting, and recursion, though those topics are not assessed in the FRQs.

I.e. introductory programming. There's nothing in the list I wrote above that is specific to Java (and if you swap out "methods" for "functions" it could be any number of different languages). It seems boring and basic to you because it is literally just the very beginning of a CS curriculum. If you're only seeing the FRQs, which test code implementation, you should also know that in the multiple-choice section there are also problems requiring students to trace code, identify useful test cases, contrast similar code segments, and describe code behaviour—all of which are pointing to deeper computer science ideas—as well as figure out how many times a particular piece of code runs for a particular input, which is a precursor to Big-O analysis.

I took the class/exam around 20 years ago when they were using C++, and it definitely covered basic data structures, like implementing linked lists. Glancing at this exam, it does seem like a step backwards.

Until 2009, the subject APCS included two courses: A (roughly CS1) and AB (roughly CS2, or perhaps CS1+CS2 depending how it was taught). Linked lists, trees, recursion, interfaces, and two-dimensional data were all part of the AB course and not A. When College Board decided to stop offering the AB course, some of those (2D data, interfaces, and, to a minimal extent, recursion) were shifted into the A course, but the data structures stuff was left out. (Interfaces have since been removed from the A exam.)

Sounds like you took the AB course (and exam); had you taken APCS A, I think you would see a modern APCS A exam as easier in some ways and harder in others.

Hmm. I don't remember linked lists being on my exam, but I do remember a contrived problem about airline seats.

Any problem written for an exam like this is going to be at least a little contrived. :) But that "airline seat" one---2002? Some people still talk about that one! It's Q4 in https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/apc/compsci_a_frq_02_1... if you'd like to revisit it...

Even when I took the "hard" version of the test back in the early 2000s, it was basically about C++ OOP.