I don't think we're defining "boilerplate" the same way, then. Reading from a file isn't something that every executable does, so when you add code for it, it's because you want your program to do it. Boilerplate is things that have to be added to every program regardless of whether they communicate anything that differentiates your program: main(), for example, or class in Java when you're not actually trying to define a class that will be instantiated by later code.