Human Years? Dog Years? How do I know?

Welcome to the Pet Age Calculator Project!

If you are a pet owner, you are in luck, as this site will answer:

How old is my dog/cat in 'human years?' Or, what equivalent developmental stage has my dog/cat reached?

If you a programmer or programming student, you are in luck, as this site will answer:

I am learning a new language, and have gotten past Hello World, Hello <<your name here>>, and unit conversion (Celcius-Fahreneit, Dollars-Euros, Joules-Calories, etc.) Now I need a good practical excercise to really begin to cement my understanding of these fundamentals. Got any suggestions?

I am seeking to create solutions in as many programming languages as possible, and present each of them here. The last link in the list is a zip file with all source code. I hereby release it to public domain. Use these as you like:

• JavaScript and Related Frameworks:
• PetAger in Plain JavaScript
• PetAger in jQuery
• PetAger in AngularJS
• Possible: perl (under construction)
• PetAger in PHP
• Source Code: petagersource.zip (216 KB)

Note: The source zip includes those versions linked, as well as Flex, Java Applet, JSP, PHP, Perl/CGI, JSF, and ASP.NET versions, but many of these are either deprecated/ disabled in browsers or do not run on my current server configuration.

Explanation:

Everyone has heard of the 'dog years' rule of seven to one. This still works as a very rough rule of thumb, but most veterinarians will tell you it is way too simplistic. For instance, most cats are able to have their first litter of kittens by age one. How many seven year old humans are that mature? Meanwhile, 15-year-old dogs are common, but 105 years for a human is a special acheivement. What is the real story?

You will probably not find universal agreement, but there are serveral points that sources seem to agree on:

• In general, dogs and cats develop much faster when young, then the rate slows down. One source even suggested that for elderly dogs, the dog-to-human equivalent may be one-to-one.
• Larger dogs age faster compared to smaller dogs. Cats age about the same as small dogs.

Pooling the available information, I based my programs on the following formulas:

• Year 1 is equivalent to 15 for cats and small/medium dogs, 16 for large dogs.
• Year 2 adds 9 for cats and small dogs, 10 for medium and large dogs.
• Every year after adds 4 for cats and small dogs, 5 for medium dogs, and 6 for large dogs.

Thus from a code-writing stand-point, the task is this: Obtain input from the user about the size of the pet and current calendar age; asking the pet's name is also nice. Implement methods that calculate both the classic "dog years" (i.e. just multipy by 7) and also the age according to the formula above. Then output these values to the user. So the programs involve basic GUI i/o, some numeric computations, perhaps a couple if/then/else blocks, and the like.