title: What is the point of serializing a class whose members are all transient?
body: <p>I was reading a bit on the Singleton design pattern and it turns out that a good way of implementing a serializable Singleton is to have a <code>readResolve</code> method which returns the true instance and all members declared <code>transient</code>. I have a couple of questions:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>If upon deserialization you're still getting the true instance and not the serialized one, isn't serializing useless? You're going to lose everything anyway.</li>
  <li>If I'm wrong about 1. above, wouldn't declaring all members transient still lose all members' values? So again, wouldn't serialization be useless?</li>
  <li>Are there any situations where serializing a Singleton is required if all member data is lost?</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>Thanks.</p>