Wiring up dependencies via XML is indeed a bad idea for the reasons you specify. But if you're going to wire up dependencies in code, you don't need annotations

Wiring up dependencies via XML is indeed a bad idea for the reasons you specify. But if you're going to wire up dependencies in code, you don't need annotations. Java already has a method for declaring and providing dependencies for a class: writing and calling constructors, which is clearer and checked by the compiler.