We all love things that we got used to, it's human nature. That's why we often neglect new things and shut our eyes because nothing can be as good as the old thing we love.

I fully understand eobet and certainly with his workflow and chain of tools he's better off with adobe.

Illustrator gets better by every release (no, really!), it now has fill tools similar to xara (still not as sex*y to use but no one is perfect). You can see a difference with each version and improvement here and there.