I think the benefit of a serialization library is going to depend on how complex and dynamic your actual output is. I've done XML-by-printing, but in that case

I think the benefit of a serialization library is going to depend on how complex and dynamic your actual output is. I've done XML-by-printing, but in that case the XML elements were fixed scaffolding with no relation to our internal object hierarchy (A containing array of B containing array of C containing array of D, always, regardless of how our application changed). It was also on an embedded system for which adding libraries was kind of painful.