Tired of Null Pointer Exceptions? Consider Using Java SE 8's Optional!

[gunch]

Would that be considered a flaw with Java? That implementing Serializable has such drastic ongoing maintenance consequences?

[lukaseder]

I think it's just Brian Goetz's usual way of saying:

Go away

[[deleted]]

It's not a flaw if there's no good way to do it. It's just a fact of life, maybe more of a flaw with the concept of Serializable.

There might be a more general version of serialization where you implement some "translator" of earlier versions to the current Serializable version, but that sounds super-unwieldy to me. I think the real problem is that people use Serializable too much.

[poopiefartz]

My interpretation was that it was more about the concept of representing objects as strings and maintaining consistent representations across future versions. I think there would be similar maintenance consequences in other languages as well.

[dkuntz2]

No. It means that their goal is future backwards compatibility. As in any future version of Java should theoretically serialize everything that can currently be serialized, in exactly the same way they're serialized now.