Question

In C++ why don’t we ever place the main method inside a class (like Java)? Why doesn’t doing so make sense (I think)?

Answer 1

We can. main is not a reserved word. But by the language standard, the C++ toolchain expects the entry point of the program to be main in the global scope. So the main inside a class won’t be recognized as the program’s entry point.

Feel free to define a class method called main, and call it from the global main.

This design comes all the way from C. Compatibility with existing C code was a major design goal of C++ early on, and there was hardly any real benefit to changing the entry point convention. So they kept the C standard in place. And like everyone said, C++, unlike Java, does perfectly allow for standalone (i. e. non-class) functions.