This post is awesome and correctly describes that frameworks try to teach you certain methodologies by enforcing them. Once you understand the principles, you'r

This post is awesome and correctly describes that frameworks try to teach you certain methodologies by enforcing them. Once you understand the principles, you're often better of ditching the framework. This is especially true with DI, which is a design principle and not a framework, countrary to popular belief. I would also like to add that specific technologies such as xml are not inherently declarative. If some api or config is declarative it only means that it is well designed and that it's easy to express your intentions when using it. If you want counter-examples, look at imperative ant or declarative jmock.