I don't understand what is the question I'm trying to solve for this problem

Question

My understanding is "Allow the user to designate the amount of additional laps the GoKart will drive when calling the drive method." However, the hints are talking about decrementing the barCount using -=. I don't see how that's related to the question at all. Please elaborate on what we are trying to achieve. Thanks

GoKart.java

class GoKart {
  public static final int MAX_BARS = 8;
  private String color;
  private int barCount;
  private int lapsDriven;
  private final int TOTAL_LAPS;

  public GoKart(String color) {
    this.color = color;
  }

  public String getColor() {
    return color;
  }
  public void charge() {
    barCount = MAX_BARS;
  }

  public boolean isBatteryEmpty() {
    return barCount == 0;
  }

  public boolean isFullyCharged() {
    return MAX_BARS == barCount;
  }

  public void drive() {
    lapsDriven++;
    barCount--;
  }

  public void drive() {
    drive(TOTAL_LAPS);
  }

  public void drive(int laps2Go) {
    lapsDriven += laps2GO;
  }

}

Answer 1 · 2017-12-04T00:14:39Z

December 4, 2017 12:14am

Hi Michael

This is the goal of the task 1 of 2: Some users of our GoKart class wrote and asked that our drive method accept a parameter to specify how many laps to go, instead of just one.

Yes it means we want the users to be able to designate their requested laps. Therefore they do not have to call drive() method each time they want to go for ONE lap. As you know that for each lap two variables will change right? The number of bars in the battery (barCount) and the number of laps driven (lapsDriven). In previous drive() method since it only runs for one lap meaning the barCount will only decremented one time (barCount -- ) and the lapsDriven will be only incremented one time (lapsDriven ++).

However in this challenge the users get to decide how many laps they want to Drive. Meaning the barCount will be reduced more than one lap if the users want more than one lap right? So naturally does the number of laps driven. Lucky for us the number of bars in the battery (barCount) is decremented exactly One bar for each lap. Thus the number of barCount decremented is exactly how much laps is requested (barCount -= lapsRequested). So does the number od lapsDriven incremented to how much laps requested (lapsDriven += lapsRequested). This how I wrote my code:

public void drive(int lapsRequest) {
    lapsDriven += lapsRequest;
    barCount -= lapsRequest;
  }

PS: for the task 1 of 2 you just need to modify the public void drive() method. You do not need to add another drive() method yet since it is not necessary yet at this moment. It will in the task 2 of 2 after this which method overloading is used.

I hope this will help a little.

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Michael Sothan

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I don't understand what is the question I'm trying to solve for this problem

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Yanuar Prakoso

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Michael Sothan

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