> Ok, sorry it's been about 20 years since I last javad and you didn't have to declare exceptions in your function signatures.

You're probably remembering RuntimeExceptions, which are a subgroup [0] that are exempt from "checking" by the compiler, which means it does not require method signatures to declare "I might emit this."

[0] https://docs.oracle.com/en/java/javase/26/docs/api/java.base...