That would depend on the XML interface you used. I don't really rate the XML parser in the Go core library much. But I think as much if that is my own personal biased against XML.

Encoding XML to a structure makes little sense, as there is not a direct map between tags, attributes and struct fields. Something like a DOM makes lots more sense, but it is also much more verbose. This is the big reason to prefer JSON over XML.

Yeah, that was the point I was hinting at :)