Why does ActionSupport implement Serializable

Question

What is the need for Action classes to be serializable? When and how does it happen, if at all.

Answer 1

As far as I can tell, it doesn't need to be Serializable, and it was a mistake to make ActionSupport implement that interface.

Here is the best reasoning I have found on the subject (taken from here):

It's very common in web frameworks to use Serializable objects for a couple or reasons, such as being able to preserve state across a server restart and for shipping objects around in a cluster.

With that said, (IMHO) I believe it was a design mistake to have ActionSupport implement Serializable. I don't believe that either of the above really apply to Action objects since they are short-lived. The choice of making Actions Serializable should have been left to the developer and not "forced" by the framework.