Comment by basscomm

I think the fundamental disconnect here is that you're assuming that I am a developer. I'm not, I'm a lousy developer. It's not for lack of trying, programming just doesn't click for me in the way that makes learning it an enjoyable process.

XSLT is a good middle ground that gave me just enough rope to do some fun transformations and put up some pages on the internet without having to set up a dev environment or learn a 'real' programming language