Chapter 1. Introduction to Drupal

Until quite recently, the most important thing a newcomer to the Web could do in order to prepare for building a website was to buy a book on how to learn programming in any one of the major web-centric languages such as PHP or Perl. The not inconsiderable task of learning the niceties of the chosen language to a respectable degree would consume a fair chunk of time and patience. Once our hapless newcomer had sufficient mastery of the fundamentals, applying that knowledge to program efficiently and reliably, with the tenacity to stick with a job until the site was developed, could arguably be described as a Herculean accomplishment.

This state of affairs is, and quite rightly should be, entirely unacceptable to someone like yourself. It's like forcing lawyers to learn the intricacies of architecture, construction, and masonry simply because they require a courtroom to work in. It should be quite apparent that separating the technical task of developing the software for a website, from the function of that website is a very sensible thing to do; the main reason being that it allows people to focus on what they are good at without them having to devote time and energy to becoming good software developers too.