I'm not 100% sure which is "better", for it seems the opinions vary greatly, and the short answer is usually, "...it depends on the particular application." [any others on the forum have input for this??]

Since I've been out of college for 10yrs. now, what is the latest idea(s) from the professor? (propose the difference, and get their viewpoint/suggestion) I'd be curious to know the result.

EDIT:
It seems that interrupt() has many side affects [i.e. might require extra exception handling -- see the Java API], where I merely set a flag to allow the thread to exit in a more clean [I think] fashion.

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Unfortunately it's an online video course that Stanford posts for free on youtube, so there's no opportunity to ask the professor.

He introduced threading it in its most basic form, with the Thread object appearing in the main class. It's not a detailed enough explanation to know whether your approach might be better in some cases.

Yeah, other input would be enlightening.

Here's another reason for "it depends", I went with what they say in the red text. However, they do mention interrupt() in the blue text. So, it's back to the "...depends on the application..." thing.

What makes it annoying is the portion "...waits for long periods...", concerning the interrupt. Well, that time period is vague [aka: undefined] to me. How to define a "long period" varies greatly by opinion!!

EDIT:
...This still doesn't answer the original question concerning classes with their own threads, or all threads from main, though. [Maybe Java alludes to this somewhere in the information link that I had in my first post? I'll have to check this too.]

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Use the force...read the source!!
WYCIWYG -- what you code is what you get!