Actually I did this as well. I learned to code in HTML and was forced to use Dreamweaver in school because it was "faster". I could use a template and code most of what I needed to by hand faster than most other students could with the tool. I also made very clean, super fast loading sites because I tried to do everything as simple as possible. On of my final projects fell through despite me building them an entire, completely custom, hand written website that was accessible, clean, and loaded super fast. I've never thought I've had a keen eye for designing new things but I've definitely got an eye for the classics and got a lot of accolades in my class for that work.

Yeah, I guess I started off the hard (wrong?) way. The first few websites I built was typed out on notepad. Progress was slow and excruciatingly difficult. Then, I discovered FrontPage and my productivity went through the roof :) Of course, the markup generated was garbage. I understood none of it and for all I knew, this was the way forward!