There isn’t anything super novel about Serde, for sure. But there’s three important things about it, in my mind: 1. It is extremely convenient and pleasant to

There isn’t anything super novel about Serde, for sure. But there’s three important things about it, in my mind: 1. It is extremely convenient and pleasant to use. 2. It’s kind of like pandoc: due to its design, it’s not just a serialization library for a specific format, but instead a platform for other libraries. Want to take in some JSON and produce TOML? No issues. Those two libraries are already interoperable. See 1 again. 3. Due to being an extremely old library, as well as a good one, everyone supports it where appropriate. This ubiquity, combined with the flexibility of 2, is a big part of what makes 1 true as well. This doesn’t mean that Serde isn’t perfect, mind you. But it is very good. And with Rust’s reputation as a difficult language, I think sometimes are surprised when things are actually convenient.