Comment by cess11

XML is great, one just need to have the appropriate tooling. XSLT, like XSD, is XML too, so the same tooling apply to those as well.

If you're manually writing the <>-stuff in an editor you're doing it wrong, do it programmatically or with applications that abstract it away.

Use things like JAXB or other mature libraries, eXist-db (http://exist-db.org), programs that can produce visualisations and so on.