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Brian Goetz, chief architect of Java, once posted a "what they think I do" vs. "what I actually" do tweet. If I remember correctly, 25% - 50% of the "what I actually do" category was something like "get angry at serialization."

So I think it's safe to say "what about serialization?" is always going to be asked.

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In this 2014 talk, Brian shows a slide in which he characterizes a visible fraction of his job as “regretting serialization” (somewhat tongue-in-cheek).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y5Pv4yN0b0&t=930s

Link is to the start of a sequence of three slides, the third of which is the slide in question.

For a more recent update on serialization, watch this talk “Serialization: A New Hope”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIbA2ymCWDs

It's not just Java, either. The original .NET serialization system is very obviously inspired by Java, and has many of the same issues - to the point where it's effectively deprecated these days.

Serialization is unfortunately important though... want to suspend a program and resume it later, or transfer it over a network, etc. The real world is kinda a let down.

That's a hydration problem though, it doesn't require magically serializing the running state like java Serializable wants to. It just needs a way to produce minimal inputs to then reconstitute the state again on the other side.

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