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== Critique ==
A '''major problem''' with '''marker interfaces''' is that an interface defines a contract for implementing classes, and that contract is inherited by all subclasses. This means that you cannot "unimplement" a marker. In the example given, if you create a subclass that you do not want to serialize (perhaps because it depends on transient state), you must resort to explicitly throwing <code>NotSerializableException</code> (per <code>ObjectOutputStream</code> docs).
A better solution is for the language to support metadata directly. The [[.NET Framework|.NET framework]] supports attributes that can be used to associate any type of data with a class or with its members. Java, as of Java 5 (1.5), also provides annotations on classes, methods, and member variables, that may be accessed from an instance using reflection.
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