Comment by phlakaton

1. I don't disagree that attributes have been abused – so have elements – but you yourself identified the right way to use them. Yes, you can inline attributes, but that also leads to a document that's harder to use in some cases. So long as you use them judiciously, it's fine. In actual text markup cases, they're indispensable, as HTML illustrates.

2. As far as JSON Schema, you're wrong on all acounts – wrong that I haven't seen Some Stuff, wrong that JSON schema doesn't get used (see Swagger/OpenAPI), and wrong that XML Schema doesn't also get underitilized when a group of developers get lackadaisical.

3. As far as what historical use has been, I'm less interested in exhuming historical practice than simply observing which of the many use cases over the last 20 years worked well (and still work) and which didn't. The answer isn't that none of them worked, and it certainly isn't that XML users had a better bead on how to use it 20 years ago – it went through a massive hype curve just like a lot of techs do.

4. Regarding tabular data exchange, I stand by my statement. Use XML or JSON if you must, and sometimes you must, but there are better tools for the job.