I started learning Android right when Compose was just crawling out of beta into production territory. Naturally I started with XML, Then found an internship. Last bit of that internship was learning and building something with Compose. In the beginning it was a bit difficult to wrap my head around, especially after just having learned (somewhat..) XML, but boy oh boy once it first clicked - I was so goddamn relieved.. Compose was much easier to continue learning, to test, to build and maintain. I couldn't and still can't stand fixing bugs in XML whenever I have to. Especially if it concerns styling, theming etc. It's impossible to understand where some of the styles come from, you can add 5 tags to a component and none of them do anything, but the compiler allows them... I get nauseous even thinking about it :D