Programmatically compile a Java class?

I found and modified the code below to programmatically compile a Java class:

import javax.tools.JavaCompiler;
import javax.tools.ToolProvider;

public class CompileHello {

public static void main(String[] args)  {
    JavaCompiler compiler = ToolProvider.getSystemJavaCompiler();
    int result = compiler.run(null, null , null , "C:\\Users\\quickCoder\\Desktop\\Hello.java");

    System.out.println("Compile result code = " + result);
    }
}

However, I keep getting the following error:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException
at CompileHello.main(CompileHello.java:8)

Line 8 is the following line:

  int result = compiler.run(null, null , null , "C:\\Users\\quickCoder\\Desktop\\Hello.java");

I made sure the file path entered is the actual path the Java class I have written.