I disagree there +Dean Budd. You don't have to use Spring's annotations. Everything you can do with Annotations you can do in Context Files and up until Spring 4 (and I'm a bit out of date) there were some things you had to use Context Files for.
If one ever sees wiring annotations in prod code, they should be deleted immediately. They violate the principle of IoC as you've bound two beans together at compile time. Under some circumstances (eg: DB config) use of annotations may even violate the principles of the 12 Factor app (http://12factor.net/config)
Spring should have moved away from XML yonks ago but Annotations are not the replacement.
Measure a framework on how easy it is to remove from your system.
Spring used to be very easy to remove. Delete a few context files and you're done. No code changes required.
Try to remove your application from Spring today.
If one ever sees wiring annotations in prod code, they should be deleted immediately. They violate the principle of IoC as you've bound two beans together at compile time. Under some circumstances (eg: DB config) use of annotations may even violate the principles of the 12 Factor app (http://12factor.net/config)
Spring should have moved away from XML yonks ago but Annotations are not the replacement.