The tooling did/does leave a lot to be desired in XML workflows. I think, in XML's heyday, it was way easier to template with PHP/ASP/JSP on the server. While t

The tooling did/does leave a lot to be desired in XML workflows. I think, in XML's heyday, it was way easier to template with PHP/ASP/JSP on the server. While those languages could have just as easily spit out XML to be transformed on the client, writing the XSL was non-trivial and lacked good tools to make the process easier. I find JSON to be a lackluster replacement for XML. The efforts to bolt on XML features (JSON Schema etc.) are half assed and not widely supported. Without a bunch of extra complication you can't really know what a value in JSON means beyond its translation to some primitive. The web development world doesn't deserve XML! /s I am a bit of an XML fanboy as it solves complicated problems in a logical way. I also bought into (and continue to believe) in a lot of Web 2.0 ideas beyond pastel colors and pseudo-reflections on logos.