Question

Which method is called during Constructor chain execution with an overriding method? Given the following two classes I need to know which setGear method would be called when creating a MountainBike object. My real project has nothing to do with bicycles, I am trying to override a class to change the behavior of one method that is called in the constructor of the super class and I’m not sure how it should work…

public class Bicycle {
    public int cadence;
    public int gear;
    public int speed;

    public Bicycle(int startCadence,
                   int startSpeed,
                   int startGear) {
        setGear(startGear);
        setCadence(startCadence);
        setSpeed(startSpeed);
    }

    public void setCadence(int newValue) {
        cadence = newValue;
    }

    public void setGear(int newValue) {
        gear = newValue;
    }

    public void applyBrake(int decrement) {
        speed -= decrement;
    }

    public void speedUp(int increment) {
        speed += increment;
    }        
}

public class MountainBike extends Bicycle {
    public int seatHeight;

    public MountainBike(int startHeight,
                        int startCadence,
                        int startSpeed,
                        int startGear) {
        super(startCadence, startSpeed, startGear);
        seatHeight = startHeight;
    }   

    public void setHeight(int newValue) {
        seatHeight = newValue;
    }

    public void setGear(int newValue) {
    if(newValue<4)
            gear = newValue;
        else{
            gear = 4;
        }

    }    
}

Answer 1

If you instantiate the overriding class, then its overriding methods will be the ones executed.

Bicycle bike;

bike = new Bicycle(1,2,3);
bike.setGear(8);//Bicycle's setGear is run

bike = new MountainBike(1,2,3,4);
bike.setGear(8);//MountainBike's setGear is run

— Edit: to reflect OP edited question (setGear is now called from within Bicycle‘s constructor) —

Bicycle b=new MountainBike(1,2,3,4);

Given that you instantiate a MountainBike, MountainBike‘s setGear gets executed.