Deserialization is the process of taking a serialized format, like JSON or XML, and turning it back into a rich object hierarchy your program can use. It's the opposite of serialization, which is like packing all your stuff into boxes before a move, while deserialization is like unpacking everything and putting it in its proper place in your new digs.

How to use it in a sentence

• I spent all day debugging an issue that turned out to be due to deserialization barfing on some malformed JSON from the new intern's API.

• After getting paged at 3am because deserialization was failing in prod, I decided it was time to update my resume and look for a new gig without so much technical debt.

If you actually want to learn more...

• Martin Fowler has an insightful article on the pitfalls of automatic deserialization and the benefits of hand-coding it instead to avoid tightly coupling services:

Enterprise Integration Using REST

• For a deep dive into how deserialization is handled in popular binary formats like Avro, Protocol Buffers, and Thrift, check out this post that compares how they handle schema evolution:

Schema Evolution in Avro, Protocol Buffers and Thrift

• And if you really want to nerd out on deserialization patterns, Fowler's site has a whole collection of articles on topics like refactoring serialization code, dependency injection, and domain-driven design:

Object Collaboration Design

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