Day 2: Building Business and Scientific Applications

Introduction

Computer science is an enabling science with applications in a variety of fields such as the sciences, business, and engineering. As a result, computing is ubiquitous in these domains and many students of these disciplines study computer science to support their modeling, simulation, and experimental research activities. For example, bioinformatics is an emerging area leveraging information technology to study problems in molecular biology ^[1]. Specifically, high-performance computing is used to study protein folding.

In this segment of the program, students will develop financial systems to convert currencies, calculate the compounding interest on a savings account, and calculate the monthly payment on a loan, and programs for scientific computing, such as numerical differentiation and integration, and then build user interfaces to these applications in Java.

Learning Java & NetBeans

Today you will be writing programs using the Java programming language. To facilitate development of your programs we will use an Integrated Development Environment (IDE), specifically NetBeans. These tutorials will familiarize you with the fundamentals of both Java and the NetBeans IDE.

1. NetBeans Tutorial: Create a New Project
2. NetBeans Tutorial: Build a Graphical User Interface
3. Learning the Java Language
4. Essential Java Classes

The following exercises are presented in increasing order of difficulty within each category and should be completed in this order. However, you may start with either category depending on your interests.

Business & Finance

1. Loan Calculator (Sample Solution)
2. Currency Converter (Sample Solution)
3. Postfix Expression Evaluation (Sample Solution)

Math & Science

1. Leap Years (Sample Solution)
2. Roman Numerals (Sample Solution)
3. Number Systems (Sample Solution)
4. Newton's Method (Sample Solution)
5. Numerical Integration (do Postfix Expression Evaluation first) (Sample Solution)