I resisted Haml for a long time for much the same reason. I then ended up using it for XML views (rather than builder, which is rather slow) and was rapidly hoo

I resisted Haml for a long time for much the same reason. I then ended up using it for XML views (rather than builder, which is rather slow) and was rapidly hooked. I don't think I would ever go back to writing raw (X|HT)ML given the choice.