Hi,
I'm trying to teach myself Java for this years competition, having never done anything more complex than Liberty Basic. I understand classes, and how to use one to define an object. I'm using the Java tutorials on Sun.com to teach myself. I got to the section on interfaces, and for the life of me I cannot understand how to use them, or even what they are.
I have this sample program (attached), which uses bicycles as an example class. There is the superclass Bicycle, and the subclass MountainBike. 3 objects are defined, bike1, bike2, and bike3. Bike1 and bike2 are normal Bicycle objects, and bike3 is a MountainBike.
Bicycle has states "cadence", "speed", and "gear". It has methods "changeCadence", "changeGear", "speedUp", "applyBrakes".
MountainBike extends class Bicycle to include state "awesomeness" (first state that popped to mind
)
At the end, the program prints the states of each bike.
How would I use interfaces in a useful manner in this program? What use are they in general?
Thanks,
Isaac