Yes, XML is different than JSON and YAML, but it’s not particularly easier or harder to manually read/edit than JSON or YAML are (IMO the are all a pain, each in its own way).

If you want to look at it from the programmer’s side (which is not what OP was talking about)… marshalling/unmarshalling has been a solved issue for at least 20yrs now :) just have a library do it for you (do map json/yaml properties to you objects manually?).

You don’t need to worry about attributes/child elements: <person name="jack" /> and <person><name>jack</name></person> will work the same (ok, this may depend on what language/library you pick - the lib I used back in the day worked either way).

If anything, the issue with XML is all the unnecessarily complicated stuff they added to its “core” (eg. CDATA, namespaces, non-standalone documents, …) and all the unnecessarily complicated technologies/standards they developed around XML (from Xinclude to SOAP and many others)… but just ignore that BS (like the rest of the world does) and you’ll mostly be fine :)