title: Running old Java Programs
body: <p>a few years back in college I wrote TONS of simple little java programs... I haven't used them in a while and I would like to go back and revist them. I believe I used Netbeans as my IDE (but i also could have used Eclipse... cant remember).. </p>
  
  <p>anyways long story short.... I cant remember how to compile them and I cant open these as projects in any of my IDEs.... </p>
  
  <p>I've tried using <code>javac</code> and then <code>java</code> to run a few in the command line, however one specifically will not run and gives me this error:</p>
  
  <p><code>Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: main</code></p>
  
  <p>I know this is because I don't have a <code>public static void main</code> method in this program. I can't remember why I don't.... but here's in theory how it should work.... I have 3 program files:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>race.java</li>
  <li>bicyclePanel.java</li>
  <li>controlPanel.java</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>race extends <code>JApplet</code> and has a method <code>public void init()</code>.... which creates an instance of controlPanel class.... <code>controlPanel</code> class creates an instance of <code>bicyclePanel</code>  and so on and so forth....</p>
  
  <p>my question is.. am I supposed to have a <code>main</code> method? How can I rebuild this into an IDE and run? It's been so many years I cant remember all the in's &amp; outs of java :(</p>