First of all, if you don’t plan to ever serialize an instance of your class, there is no need to even think about serializing it. Only implement what you need, and don’t try to make your class serializable just for the sake of it. If your object has a reference (transitive or direct) to any … Read more
I generally avoid “marker interfaces” because they don’t allow you to unmark a derived type. But that aside, here are some of the specific cases that I have seen where marker interfaces would be preferable to built-in meta-data support: Run-time performance sensitive situations. Compatibility with languages that don’t support annotation or attributes. Any context where … Read more
Joshua Bloch: Effective Java 2nd Edition, p 179 Item 37: Use marker interfaces to define types … You may hear it said that marker annotations (Item 35) make marker interfaces obsolete. This assertion is incorrect. Marker interfaces have two advantages over marker annotations. First and foremost, marker interfaces define a type that is implemented by … Read more
Is the definition of a marker interface mentioned above in 1st point wrong? – It is correct in the parts that (1) a marker interface must be empty, and (2) implementing it is meant to imply some special treatment of the implementing class. The part that is incorrect is that it implies that JVM or … Read more