Hello, Out Loud

Every program starts inside main

Java will not run a line of code just because it is sitting in a file. It needs a class to hold it, and inside that class it needs one particular method: public static void main(String[] args). That line is not decoration and none of the words in it are optional yet — think of it as the doorway every Java program is required to have, the one spot the computer knows to start reading from. Everything you want to happen goes between the curly braces that follow it.

The class name and the file are tied together on this site: your code always runs as a class called Main. That is why every starter file you meet from here on begins the same way.

What System.out.println does

Whatever sits between the round brackets gets shown on the screen, and println adds a new line afterwards so the next call starts on a fresh row. Wrap your text in double quotes and Java treats it as plain text, printed exactly as written — letters, spaces, punctuation and all.

That is the whole idea. There is nothing hidden underneath it.

A worked example

Here is a different program, so you can see the shape of it without being given the answer:

public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println("--> ready");
        System.out.println("--> steady");
        System.out.println("--> go");
    }
}

Running that prints three lines:

--> ready
--> steady
--> go

Three println calls, three lines of output, in the order they were written. The arrows and the spaces come out exactly as they were typed — Java does not tidy anything up or add anything of its own.

Your turn

The editor already holds a working program. Press Run before changing anything and a four-line banner appears: a row of = signs, two lines of text, then another row of = signs.

One thing is missing. The middle line says YOUR NAME instead of your name.

Replace those two words with your own name, keep the quotes exactly where they are, and press Run again. That is the entire task — you are not expected to write a line from scratch yet.

If something goes wrong

If javac complains, it is almost always the quotes or the semicolon. The text you want printed has to sit between double quotes — "Hello, Maya!" works, Hello, Maya! on its own does not, because without quotes Java reads it as the name of something rather than as text to display. And every statement needs a semicolon at the end; leaving one off makes the compiler report the mistake on the line after the one that is actually missing it.

Nothing you do here can break anything. Change it, run it, change it again.