Thread: How to create a coin flip program

ok well to start off this is my first time on this forum and hopefully im in the right section, im in a highschool computer programing class and would like to do something with my coin flip class over the winter break, i would like to create a program to click a button and it displayes an animation of a coin fliping and then landing on either heads or tails, this is my current code. (oh yeah using blueJ, i dont know if there is another java programing program just thought id mention that just incase.)

public class Coin
{
    // instance variables
    private double value;
 
    /**
     * Constructor for objects of class Coin
     */
    public Coin()
    {
        // initialise instance variables
        value = 0;
    }
 
    /**
     * flip will create a random number between 0 and 1 and store it in value
     *  
     */
    public void flip()
    {
       value = Math.random(); 
 
    }
 
    /** isHeads will return true if the value is less then 0.5
     * 
     *@return true if value < 0.5
     *              false otherwise
     */
    public boolean isHeads()
    {
        if (value < 0.5)
            return true;
        return false;
 
    }
 
        /** istails will return true if the value is greater then or equal to 0.5
     * 
     *@return true if value > 0.5
     *              false otherwise
     */
    public boolean isTails()
    {
        if (value >= 0.5)
            return true;
        return false;
 
    }
 
 
}

The way I would recommend getting started with Java GUI programming is with Oracle's Java Swing tutorials (or a good book if you have access to one).

I would recommend getting familiar with creating simple GUI interfaces (buttons, labels, custom painting, etc.) before attempting something like an animation.

The animation part can be either difficult or easy, I would recommend starting out with a series of still coin shots and simply switching between the pictures. If you're feeling ambitious, you can try 3D animations via JOGL or LWJGL (jMonkeyEngine might also be a viable and easier alternative).

I've never personally used BlueJ, I'm kind of an Eclipse fan myself Another good IDE is Netbeans. I believe all three are free (Eclipse and Netbeans are open source, not sure about BlueJ).