There’s an awful lot of things you can do with WordPress, isn’t there?

Yes, not a very original observation.  It’s a very powerful tool. 

Yours truly is supposed to be a web developer.  Connection strings?  No worries.  Stored procedures? Eat ‘em for breakfast (that’s why I have to drink so much, you see.  To make up for the defiecencies elsewhere in my diet).  The various things you can do with this however, actually have me reaching for the manual, and that’s never happened before.

There is a point to this, honest. Oh yes: WordPress has really brought home to me the massive difference between a competent user and a competent developer.  I’m pretty sure that it would take me less time to design from scratch a website that mimicked the appearance of a blog, than it would for me to use WordPress to create a really nice looking blog.  And that’s got to be the key difference between a Developer and a user.  I want to get under the bonnet – in fact, I don’t even want the bonnet to be there until I’ve bolted it on.  These days, a really good user has got more power than a developer: they’re half way to New York while I’m still stood on the tarmac asking what makes it go.