I think Spring, Maven (and ant before), JSP, and J2EE descriptors gave XML a bad name, as fields of application where a markup language wasn't adequate. XML was

I think Spring, Maven (and ant before), JSP, and J2EE descriptors gave XML a bad name, as fields of application where a markup language wasn't adequate. XML was meant as a simplification of SGML to formalize and extend HTML on the web, but was overhyped as serialization format for everything and anything for all the wrong reasons, among them that XML sold well to management. It can be argued that, despite not a primary use case for markup, XML has found a useful niche in b2b service payloads and government, banking, and health services in particular. The use case for those might have been "web services" in the original sense where simple CSS-like transforms and styles are applied to payloads for display in browsers, but the JSON community hasn't brought forward a serious replacement for XML Schema, so XML payloads kindof keep sticking around in long-term projects.