Cycling Speed

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Problem

You are an employer on the software team of Bikers Forever, a bicycle company. The software team uses Java and the knowledge of the Java SDK to write programs for Biker Forever. You are a great COMP 1010 student so you already have an idea of writing in Java, so in breathless anticipation, you await your next assignment from the head of the software team :)

You arrive at your desk on Monday morning and open your email in-box (as usual) to see this message from the head:

Hi <insert name here>,

I need you to write a program that allows customers who visit the Bicycle Forever to calculate the speed of their bicycles. One of the members of the team stumbled on the formula to calculate cycling speed, and knowing you are just itching for an assignment, I thought of you straightaway to implement the formula. The program description and the formula is below:

Program Description

  1. The program will prompt the user to input
    • The RPM (rotations per minute) of the bicycle
    • The number of teeth in the rear gear
  2. The program will also store as constants the number of teeth in the front gear and the diameter of the bicycle wheel. Assume the number of front teeth to be 45 and the diameter to be 70cm always.

Formula

  1. Before you calculate the speed, you must first calculate the meters of development. This is the length in meters covered by each rotation of the wheel of the bicycle. Meters of development (mdev, as we'll call them) are calculated this way:
    mdev = circumference[m] * (number front teeth / number rear teeth)
    
  2. Finally, now that we have the mdev we can calculate the speed:
    speed = mdev * rpm * 60/1000
    

Output

To display your results, assuming a customer inputs 75 for RPM and 20 for rear teeth, the output will be displayed this way:

You have entered 75 RPM and 20 rear teeth.
Meters of development: 4.948008429403924
Speed [km/hour]: 22.266037932317655

Programmed by Bicycle Forever
Date: September 18, 2008
*** End of Processing ***

Thanks!, <insert name here>, I am confident you will do a great job.
The Boss

 

Cycling Speed

Wiki start01.jpg

Solution

To program our solution, we will go through 4 steps:

  1. Identify and declare all variables and constants
  2. Store user input on bicycle information
  3. Perform the calculations
  4. Output the results

In addition, we will be sure to comment through out our code, and follow correct programming standards as stated in [1]


Identify and declare all variables and constants

First, organized code is vital to the readability of the code. The COMP 1010 Coding Standards give the foundation required to complete the code organization task for this case study. Each of the headings below describe a specific task that helps organize the code.

Store user input on bicycle information

The code file contains more than one statements on each line.

int digit1 = (isbn % 10);int total = digit1 * 9;isbn = isbn / 10;
int digit2 = (isbn % 10);total = total + digit2 * 8;isbn = isbn / 10;

Each of the above lines of code performs a similar function. Each line can be interpretted as a block of code. By placing each statements on a separate line and grouping the statements into appropriate code blocks, the result should look something like the following:

int digit1 = (isbn % 10);
int total = digit1 * 9;
isbn = isbn / 10;
int digit2 = (isbn % 10);
total = total + digit2 * 8;
isbn = isbn / 10;

By placing each of the statements on a separate line, the readability of the code increases dramatically.

Perform the calculations

Once the statements are readable, the next step would be to organize them into code blocks as stated in COMP 1010 Coding Standards. Continuing with our previous example, the functionality of the code can be broken into two distinct code blocks.

int digit1 = (isbn % 10);
int total = digit1 * 9;
isbn = isbn / 10;

int digit2 = (isbn % 10);
total = total + digit2 * 8;
isbn = isbn / 10;

Almost each line of code in the messy code file can be considered a separate code block. Take the time to read the code and understand how everything works together before deciding which statements should be grouped together.

One of the code blocks that should be added is a variable declaration code block at the beginning of the main method. Throughout the messy code, integers are declared. All of the declaration statements should be placed at the beginning of the main method to ensure the code stays organized. Going to the previous example, two declaration statements can be moved to the top as depicted below.

int digit1;
int digit2;

digit1 = (isbn % 10);
int total = digit1 * 9;
isbn = isbn / 10;

digit2 = (isbn % 10);
total = total + digit2 * 8;
isbn = isbn / 10;

Perform the calculations

The COMP 1010 coding standards, or the Funky Books Inc. coding standards, make numerous points concerning comments in code. To be specific, statements 1, 2, 4, and 7 can be applied to the code file for this case study. All major code blocks should be identified by now. Look over each code block and briefly explain what it does in a comment. Since all declaration statements have been moved to the top of the the main method , make sure to apply coding standard 7 from the COMP 1010 Coding Standards.

Output the results

At the top of the main method, there should now be a number of variables declared. Notice that there are nine different "digit" variables which are only used once to store the same calculation.

int digit1;
int digit2;

digit1 = (isbn % 10);
int total = digit1 * 9;
isbn = isbn / 10;

digit2 = (isbn % 10);
total = total + digit2 * 8;
isbn = isbn / 10;

The code sample from above shows two of the nine digit variables. These two variables can be replaced with a single one as follows:

int digit;

digit = (isbn % 10);
int total = digit * 9;
isbn = isbn / 10;

digit = (isbn % 10);
total = total + digit * 8;
isbn = isbn / 10;

Bonus Section: Outputting the Current Date

The messy code contained a total of eight different coding errors. Each error presented in this section is ordered as it appears in the code from the case study.

Commenting and Testing

int isbn = Temp;

There are two problems with the above code sample. The first problem being that the variable "Temp" is of type string and not of the primitive type int. The second problem is the name of the variable "Temp". The variable was originally declared as "temp" and Java is a case sensitive language. Both programs are repaired by replacing the code with the line below.

isbn = Integer.parseInt(temp);

Code

Solution Code

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