Re: So many negative waves!
I'll follow up a bit. When I referenced people "hand-coding" web sites I was imagining someone sitting down with a text editor, a blank screen, and typing <html> and going from there. Obviously, and I've dealt with projects like this, there's heavy duty coding happening on any moderately large site.
However, and this was my point, I'm pretty sure that no-one, except for a few edge cases, ever starts from zero and builds a site from nothing. I'd wager that 98% of web projects begin with an existing, well-tested, well understood, well supported platform or framework, and builds on that structure. I can't imagine many cases where you won't take something "off the shelf" and then adapt it to suit a specific project. If a large part of the work has already been done it would be foolish to not use it.
I can't be bothered getting all pedantic about whether WordPress (or any other tool) is a "real CMS." The point of the exercise is to have something on-line that lets people add, subtract, and change content elements at will. In other words, Manage your Content.
If a nice little WordPress install is the right tool for a small job, that's what should be used. It's ridiculous to foist some gigantic, complex software package on someone just because WordPress is cool enough for you.
The success of WordPress rests on one thing: one heck of a lot of people and companies don't want to have the expense of an in-house tech developer just to have a little web site. WordPress, and lately things like SquareSpace, give them what they need with minimal expense and minimal hassle. That's not a bad thing.
And honestly, WordPress has come a long, long way from the days when it was just a blogging platform. It's more than powerful and flexible enough for a lot of small projects, is well enough supported that you can solve problems pretty quickly, and out of the box gives you something that looks not too bad on most devices.