The proliferation of XML files for configuration bugs me. All of the XML configuration mechanisms I have looked at are used to create and wire application objects together at launch time. I'm the lucky one who gets to write and maintain these files. Framework developers have to write and maintain thousands of lines of code for processing XML files, and creating objects based upon them. There must be a way to achieve the same end which lets me forget about XML and absolves the framework developer of the need to maintain so much XML parsing code.

Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) is one of new buzz-words at the high-end of Java technology. AOP addresses Cross-Cutting concerns in a project. These are areas of functionality that are not limited to a single class but instead are applicable across a whole range of classes.