XML settings part 1
The fact that XML is, basically, a steaming pile of goatshit is not news. Many many people know this now, yet you have an awful number of people eager to grab a hold of some xml and perform deviant sexual activities in it, around it, and in between its elements.
The problem is that there are some good ideas out there that happen to use xml. Even though xml has nothing to do with the quality of the idea, xml somehow gets credit.
This has become quite apparent lately when participating in some Guice vs Spring debates. The fact of the matter is, Spring’s XML sucks unbelievable amounts of ass. Don’t buy the bullshit hype of Spring 2.0 improving its XML so it’s now all great. All it’s done is made it plausible that one might not jab oneself in the eye with a big black ribbed for his pleasure dildo when confronted with it. I cannot believe that a sane person would think that the Spring 1.x syntax is fit to deposit a big dogturd on, let alone use in any application you’d care to be associated with.
You either have to autowire (which is convenient but too magical as your project grows, not to mention fragile), or explicitly wire stuff in xml, miles away from the source code. Lets not even get started on how abysmal performance is once you’re using a real project with more than 3 beans, or heaven forbid, wiring up actions at runtime. You could play many a game of soggy biscuit while Spring figures out who needs what, when, and why.
Of course, the situation is conveniently disguised by the fact that tools such as IDEA natively grok Spring’s hellish configuration.
