You owe it to yourself to use WPF

[DeanMc]

Syntax-wise, I'm of strong opinion the majority of programming language's program code should be plain-text and only special conditions such as specific data-types warrant whole-line modifiers such as [brackets], <tags>, or "quotes".

That is what is going on here your saying:

Treat the following line as a button:

<Button/>

and so on. I thought the same as yourself about XAML but try to think how they could have done it differently remember XAML describes things thats its job it does not assign things you do not assign a button in XAML (ok in the backround you do but thats a different matter) you basicly are using XAML to say I have a forum with 10 buttons 6 radio buttons and a list. You also use it to say that the things you have discribed have access to X data, y event and look XY way.

If you think about how you currently do that in C#/VB you will see that XAML makes more sense, code is separated out and containment is more natural.