I think it also got horribly abused by some use cases. People tried to allow programming in it (e.g. if statements and loops) when an actual DSL would have been

I think it also got horribly abused by some use cases. People tried to allow programming in it (e.g. if statements and loops) when an actual DSL would have been a better solution. I know that was my last straw before I started assuming that anything that required XML would be painful to work with. It wasn't an entirely fair assumption, but it was correct often enough that I used it as a helpful heuristic.