public static void foo() throws IOException {
    // some code here, when something goes wrong, you might do:
    throw new IOException("error message");
}

public static void main(String[] args) {
    try {
        foo();
    } catch (IOException e) {
        System.out.println(e.getMessage());
    }
}

throw new java.lang.Error("this is very bad");
throw new java.lang.RuntimeException("this is not quite as bad");