void ?

[Lou Maybe]

I have a basic understanding of c++ and that about as far as my programming
knowledge extends. I was lead to belive void main was a bad thing yet in every sample program i've seen in java this seems standard practice, why?

[Marilyn de Queiroz]

main() a bad thing?

You need to have a method named
public static void main( String[] args )
to start off any java application. You may not need main() in every class in your project, but you certainly need one or your app won't run.

If you only program applets or servlets you could, however, get by without a main() method.

[Ilja Preuss]

The main method in Java *has* to have a return value of "void" per specification.
In C/C++, it is a good practice to let main have a return value of int to specify the exit code of the program.
In Java, a program has an exit value of 0 by default - if you want to specify a different value, you need to use System.exit(exitCode).