That's interesting! If one compare to HTML, I think it's safe to say that it's good to start out with simple hand coding (and simple pages) to learn what's going on, but at a certain point a visual tool starts be more practical for the lay out, and BBEdit or the like is better for polishing code, the two working in tandem.
In the case of building a Web server, is the situation the same, i.e., is it better to start out by hand, and then perhaps combine with a visual tool like iTools? In the field of UNIX networking administration on, I haven't done any more difficult task than setting up UUCP on a couple of NeXT machines, but I found it useful to gain some understanding of how the configuration files actually work, setting up permissions correctly etc.
Also, iTools do a lot of things one may not need initially, like eCommerce stuff. So perhaps hand coding is not too bad a path to tread even for a beginner, looking to set up a Web and ftp server? (I also want to do streaming QuickTime stuff)
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