Been stuck a week with JSON serializer struggles on the backend I'm working on... First of all, this project has source code dating back to 2013, and the dudes back then decided to use three versions of json. So you have your usual application/json and then two custom ones.

Not happy with that, they decide on using two serializers, XStream and Jackson. One custom and application/json run through XStream, and the other more legacy custom JSON runs through Jackson. So this is a bloody mess.

But now they want application/json running through Jackson, and this is breaking all the regression tests. Have to reimplement all the type, field, alias and other kinds of mappings they made for XStream, and sort out all the regressions this causes.

And the dude who designed all of this is revered in the company, although he left a while back. Not sure if I'm too much of an idiot to understand the utter brilliance of the approach, or its just poorly designed... Fuck my life, those due dates just keep creeping closer and closer and this kinda crap just keeps coming :S

Had my first "it's working but I don't know why" moment. Freshly out of the basic courses in university I stumbled into my first project, side quest: got an xml file written with XStream which needed to be re-read by JAXB. Never worked with any kind of XML before and now after a lot of swearing at the computer I did it. It's working, I'm getting my array list with Elements out of the goddamn XML yay!