XML is OK
Gordon Weakliem: While I accept that a large part of the problem with XML may be the popular APIs for dealing with it, I'm not sure Tim's answers are on target. Tim does draw the parallel to socket libraries in talking about interop. Sockets are still a pain in the neck to code at the socket level, I just hardly ever have to do it anymore. Maybe I'll feel the same about XML when I can substitute "XML" for "socket".
What's good about sockets isn't that you have to program at that level, it's that you can. The same thing should be true about xml. The problem comes in when people fool themselves into believing that xml should only be produced by programs for consumption by other programs.