This exactly describes my very brief experience working with Java professionally. Back in university it was no big deal - the differences between C++ and Java weren't that big. In a production environment, though; ... XML, XML, XML!
All the XML-wrapper tools for Java are supposedly the reason why there is so much XML config stuff going on - but the result is that you end up writing soo much code in XML instead of the actual language that you're supposed to be using.
It's like somebody looked quickly at the MVC pattern, got it all wrong, and now Java has very tight coupling between XML and Java code for any production environment that hopes to leverage existing tools.
All the XML-wrapper tools for Java are supposedly the reason why there is so much XML config stuff going on - but the result is that you end up writing soo much code in XML instead of the actual language that you're supposed to be using.
It's like somebody looked quickly at the MVC pattern, got it all wrong, and now Java has very tight coupling between XML and Java code for any production environment that hopes to leverage existing tools.