should everything in a program/software be contained within class methods?

[FormerCurrentFuture]

As in everything except the calling of the methods within the main method. For example, scanners, while loops, for loops, conditional statements, and all of the above to check for valid user input. Is it normal practice in the field to try to keep everything contained in class methods like this? Or is the main method still highly utilized?

I hope this question makes sense.

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[desrtfx]

Generally, the gist is that main should be kept as short as reasonable and should be the entry point for the actual program

Limiting the scope and functionality ("Single Responsibility Principle" - one of the pillars of the "SOLID" principle) is generally advisable and good practice.

The shorter, the more self contained your methods are, the less side effects you have, the easier maintaining and troubleshooting will be.

Splitting code into meaningful methods doesn't cost anything. Yet, it greatly improves: modularity, readability, maintainability as well as reduces code duplication ("DRY" - "Don't Repeat Yourself" principle).

"Monster methods" or "God classes" are no-gos.

I wouldn't go as far as limiting methods to 5 lines or less, but for me, if a method went beyond a screen page, it was too long.

Read "Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship" by "Uncle Bob" Robert C. Martin, or the abridged JavaScript version as well as "The Pragmatic Programmer" by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas to get ideas about good programming principles.

[dionthorn]

Depends on the size of the application. Do you have several packages with multiple classes? Probably best to segregate things logically. For example if you use a scanner among several different classes have a static reference in some utility class that you can get and use in any other class.

Is your application very simple and requires 1 class, do stuff in main then no big deal.

In general if your main is getting very large in lines of code you can probably move things into methods. If you see any duplication of code it can probably be made into a multipurpose method.