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I ran into problems when /boot was part of the larger xfs filesystem, so had to create an ext3 /boot instead.

And in general, if you want to use any filesystem that your operating system supports but your bootloader does not, you need a /boot

Excellent point, I forgot that use case.

People who are serious about having an encrypted system should have absolutely none of the bootstrap process residing unencrypted on the disks of that system because somebody could take out the drive, look through the boot process, and log your passphrase.

I have an encrypted laptop that boots from a read-only USB key that is attached to my keyring. It will only boot from this keyring (and a backup CD-R that I have), and the system and the boot media are never stored together. Before USB keyrings became common, I would have the boot media be a CD-R.