So… I moved to the dark side.
I have always developed web applications mostly from scratch- I create the databases, write the code and make the design. But today, as you can see, I started a personal blog. And rather than making the site from scratch I resorted to using a popular blog/cms solution.
I should have known what to expect. After all I used to do web development on a MS CMS 2001 platform at some point in my life, but it still caught me be surprise. I had forgotten how clumsy things can be. On the one hand you still have to program any customizations you have in ASP, PHP, Java or whatever the case might be, and on the other you have to get familiarized with the API of the new CMS solution to accomplish even the simplest tasks.
I guess there is no silver bullet… I gained some by not having to do the simple things myself- the design, the programming of the standard features that I would need for a blogging site but I also lost some, by having now to get used to this new environment that feels like a suffocating wrap around me.
There is always some learning curve… even for the smallest things.