Whatever Happened to Less Code?

When I heard about the C# Application Markup Language, CSAML, (http://www.charlespetzold.com/etc/CSAML.html) I was a little intrigued by the idea of declaratively being able to program in C#. HTML is a good example of how markup can be more concise than code, while allowing people of all degrees of skill create web pages.

Then I saw the Hello World application…IMHO, 10 lines of code for a C# Hello World app is too long, but the CSAML Hello World app came in at 20 lines of ugly, bloated XML. How is this an improvement????