A method and system for transmitting objects in an object-oriented distributed system allows the reconstruction of objects and downloading of code associated with such object reconstruction to be deferred until it is needed by a program. The deferred reconstruction is accomplished by using a Java object called a “marshalled object,” which is a self-describing stream and which is a first-class entity in the system, meaning that it exists within a type system of a programming language and can be accessed and manipulated by instructions written in that language. Such an object can typically be produced by any object that can be passed from one address space to another, and it can be stored, passed to other objects, or used to reconstruct an object of the original type on demand. The reconstruction of an object is deferred until the code holding a marshalled object directly calls the creation of the object using the marshalled object. Any downloading of code is also deferred until the marshalled object is used to create a copy of the original object.