Re: XML folks believing their own hype (Score 2, Informative)

Granted, defining a language or technology to be syntactically based on xml makes it very verbose, but there are other consequences of this too.

For one, this allows for facilitated tool integration and automated manipulation and handling. This could be for a graphical or more concise textual represenation of the xslt "program" or for automated generation. And tool integration should not be underestimated.

Think of the refactoring support that editors/IDEs are starting to provide. AFAIK, Right now this is most prevelent in java environments (have a look at IntelliJ's iDEA), having its origins in SmallTalk. This will probably be extened to other languages and technologies over the next one to three years.

I highly recommend the book Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler. Also checkout the site refactoring.com.