New Java Programming Student Needs Help

Question

Hey everyone,
I've just started taking a Java programming class at Penn State University, and I have had some prior experience with programming, i.e. C, C++, HTML, SQL. However, this will be my first attempt at Java. I know there are a lot of similarities between C++ and Java, but I'm still a little lost on some methodology.
To get myself going, I've been looking through the textbook a little and came across a problem that gave me some difficulty. I'll write out the outline:
A company pays its employees as managers (who receive a fixed weekly salary), hourly workers (who receive a fixed hourly wage for up to the first 40 hours they work and time and a half (i.e. 1.5 times their hourly wage) for overtime hours worked, commission workers (who receive $250 plus 5.7% of their gross weekly sales), and pieceworkers (who receive a fixed amount of money per item for each of the items they produce � each pieceworker in this company works on only one type of item).
+Define a Java class named EmployeePayment that includes functionality to compute the weekly pay for each employee. You do not know the number of employees in advance. Each type of employee has its own pay code: Managers have paycode 1, hourly workers have paycode 2, commission workers have paycode 3 and pieceworkers have paycode 4.+
+Define a main method that creates an instance of the EmployeePayment class, and calls the setManagerPay method to set the managers weekly salary to $625.00. The main method should then prompt the user for the paycode ��Enter paycode (-1 to end): �, validate the input and perform the associated processing for that paycode. Your program should allow the user to process employees until a paycode of -1 has been entered. Use a switch structure to compute each employee�s pay, based on the employee�s paycode. Within the switch, prompt the user (i.e. the payroll clerk) to enter the appropriate facts your program needs to calculate each employee�s pay based on that employee�s paycode, invoke the respective method (defined below) to perform the calculations and return the weekly pay for each type of employee, and print the returned weekly pay for each employee.+
+Define a setManagerPay method that accepts and stores the fixed weekly salary value for managers.+
+A private instance variable weeklyManagerPay should be defined in the EmployeePayment class to support these accessor and mutator methods.+
+Define a calcManagerPay method that has no parameters and returns the fixed weekly salary.+
+Define a calcHourlyWorkerPay method that accepts the hourly salary and total hours worked as input parameters and returns the weekly pay based on the hourly worker pay code description.+
+Define a calcCommWorkerPay method that accepts the gross weekly sales as an input parameter and returns the weekly pay based on the commission worker pay code description.+
+Define a calcPieceWorkerPay method that accepts the number of pieces and wage per piece as input parameters and returns the weekly pay based on the piece worker pay code description.+
+Once all workers have been processed, the total number of each type of employee processed should be printed. Define and manage the following private instance variables (*numManager*, numHourlyWorker, numCommWorker, and numPieceWorker) within the EmployeePayment class. What are the ways in which these variables can be updated?+
Sorry for the length, but I wanted this to be thorough. Basically, I'm having the most trouble writing the switch statement, and outputting the total number of each type of employee...
Any help and pointers will be greatly appreciated...thanks all.

Answer 1

You said you've written C and C++ code before. I don't have an excellent memory but from the little code that I wrote in C, I believe the switch statement is exactly the same.
Read this: [http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/java/nutsandbolts/switch.html]
If you're having trouble understanding something post what your specific problem is. No one is going to write your homework for you, but many, myself included, would be more than willing to help if you're really stumped. Just post your concise problem.
Edited by: sheky on Mar 12, 2008 9:52 PM