Before XML became a standard and given all its shortcomings, what made XML so popular?

Question

Yes XML is human readable but so is comma delimited text and properties files.

XML is bloated, hard to parse, hard to modify in code, plus a ton of other problems that I

Answer 1

XML is not hard to parse, in fact it's quite simple, given the volume of excellent APIs available for every language under the sun.

XML itself is not bloated, it can be as concise as necessary, but it's up to your schema to keep it that way.

XML handles hierarchical datasets in a way that comma-delimited text never could or should.

XML is self-documenting/describing, and human readable. Why is it a standard? Well, first and foremost, because it can be standardized. CSV isn't (and can't be) a standard because there's an infinite amount of variation.