In small snippets, the end tags and "<...>" nonsense actually aids readability, I think. Not that I've done any experiments to test that.

In large snippets, those things are a pain for both readability and writability.

However, there's a catch: the difference between a well written plain text editor and one that gives you a nice "structure editor" for XML is fairly small. That is, a good editor that spares you typing so much to author XML and that makes XML easier to read -- not so much more complicated than a regular old plain text editor.

So, to some extent, I really don't care about the problems of the surface syntax of XML for large snippets. I feel the same way about S-exps in lisp. They too are just fine in small snippets and, for large datums - use a structure editor.

Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawhahahahahahahahahahahah oh man

Feel free to downvote me, I admit I don't have the cognitive ability to offer an compelling response to that after laughing so hard.