Lesson 1 ( Word document ) Punters Lounge JAVA programming course. Lesson 1 - Designing your application
First thing to learn about programming is the preparation. This means defining what you want to make. That is done in 2 parts:
1.1 The functional design.
A functional design is a description of what it is you want your program or application to do.
Like this:
The application must retrieve the available odds on premiership football matches from different bookmakers. It must then find the best odds, calculate the overround and present that info so it can be reviewed at a glance.
1.2 The technical design.
The technical design is where you collect all the technical information you need to build your application. In our case we need to find out what bookmakers can be used. We need the formula to calculate overround. We need to design how we want to view the info.
Bookmakers:
We will be looking at bookmakers that run their site using HTML. These apply to:
www.victorchandler.com,
www.pinnaclesports.com,
www.paddypower.com,
www.gamebookers.com,
www.eurobet.com,
www.coral.co.uk,
www.capitalsports.com .
It is not possible on:
www.betfair.com ,
www.sportingoptions.co.uk , their site is not build with HTML only.
Note: as I'm writing this I've only had a quick look at those sites only to determine if HTML is used.
Overround:
To calculate overround: divide 1 by the odds and add the outcomes. Anything above 1 is the amount you lose betting all players. So a 2 player match with odds of: 1.35 and 3.5 has an overround of 2%. (betting on both will lose you 2% of the amount staked)
( 1 / 1,3 ) + ( 1 / 3,5 ) = 1.02
Or for a football match with the favourite at 2.00, the underdog at 3.3 and the draw at 3.6 its:
( 1 / 2.00 ) + ( 1 / 3.3 ) + ( 1 / 3.6 ) = 1.08 being 8%
Obviously finding an overround of less that 100% gives an opportunity of making a sure profit betting all outcomes.
Viewing the info:
What we want is a simple list of the odds at the bookmakers, then one line stating the best odds available calculating the overround each time. Like this:
Arsenal - Liverpool - Draw
1.75 - 6.0 - 3.35 = 3.7% at
Bet365
1.85 - 5.0 - 3.30 = 4.3% at
Ladbrokes
1.65 - 5.5 - 3.40 = 8.1% at
WillHill
Best odds
1.85
Ladbrokes 6.0
Bet365 3.4
WillHill = 0.1% overround
SCHOLAR class: now I don't need to tell you the importance of spending sufficient time on your design, you should know by experience how much time it saves you along the way.
ROOKIE class: you may get the impression that it's a bit too much, lets just get on with it. Well in this case you are right, however as you start writing bigger programs you will need to spend more time on the design. Believe me, it will save you a whole lot of time along the way.
I rest my case.
Assignment 1.1
If you are content by following my lead as described above that's fine. But I invite you to think about applications of your own. Write some functional designs. What would you like a program for? And don't be afraid to use your imagination.