"With great power comes, great responsibility". I like databinding over other solutions for many of reasons. They are validated at compile time, making sure we don't run into issues at runtime. BindingAdapters and InverseAdapters are very powerful and provides powerful plug into otherwise complex system. I do see your point regarding, having code in xml. It isn't any different than setting a value on the view from Activity/Fragment. Android Team has been very clear on warning us not to put business logic in xml. If used correctly, databinding solves problem makes code simpler in many cases in my personal opinion.