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The only real-world usage I see for annotations are in GSON (the @Expose) and JUnit with @Test.

Never really came across with any other real cases where it solves a pressing issue as you mention. Most times is far more convenient to do things outside the compiled code.

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Agreed. These are good examples where annotations seem like a good fit. Being able to tell a processor that a method or field is "special". Test methods, serializable hints, etc.

It's kind of like, when annotations were delivered to Java, lots of projects thought they were just the next greatest thing. I followed right along at the time, as well.

But over time, finding the value in the configuration-as-code approach to application deployment, I definitely feel that annotations have been abused for many use cases.

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