Why does Java have transient fields?

Question

Why does Java have transient fields?

Answer 1

A transient variable is a variable that may not be serialized.

One example of when this might be useful that comes to mind is, variables that make only sense in the context of a specific object instance and which become invalid once you have serialized and deserialized the object. In that case it is useful to have those variables become null instead so that you can re-initialize them with useful data when needed.