Well, for starters, Spring basically has eliminated XML configuration with Spring-Boot. Add a couple annotations and you&#x27;re done (as in, fully done, no web.xml&#x27;s, no application-contexts). (Granted, I don&#x27;t really like this, from an engineering point of view, but whatever).<p>Also, I really wouldn&#x27;t complain about Maven, as it is <i>hands down</i> the best dependency manager available from <i>any</i> language, bar <i>maybe</i> gem&#x2F;rails (node isn&#x27;t even close, since you need a c++ compiler to actually get quite a few packages). There are also enough plugins for every IDE out there to handle Maven POM&#x27;s.<p>But if that wasn&#x27;t enough, there&#x27;s now Gradle. You can literally have an entire Spring&#x2F;Java&#x2F;Grade project that doesn&#x27;t use <i>ANY</i> XML, but purely Annotations&#x2F;DSLs.<p>Secondly, there&#x27;s a major selection bias at play. In your own words &quot;everything <i>I&#x27;ve</i> seen of...&quot;, sorry but your point was lost right there.<p>Yes. I&#x27;ve seen (and written) plenty of <i>actual</i> production Java code that doesn&#x27;t use any XML configuration at all.<p>There are a lot of issues with Java, but XML isn&#x27;t <i>INHERENT</i> to it.