Sure, in the early days it might have been true, but for the most part I doubt if even they realize how much easier it has become.
So let me say this once clearly.
There is VERY LITTLE actual new code writing going on in the web site design community right now.
Why? Well, just like the university essays I used to write (I could wallpaper a house with the number of images in my head I have of the clock slowly creaking around to 4am...), code writing is an incremental kind of knowledge.
When a language is born - even English, for example - it has a rather limited set of attributes - words, expressions, nouns, verbs, and so forth. Computer languages are born in an even more rudimentary fashion, but also rely on public use for much of their growth.
As capabilities are demanded of the language, some really smart people get together and make new, revised standards for the language to support the new capabilities that we web site designers are all clamouring for. It's akin to writing an updated dictionary for the language to reflect the new realities of its use.
On the ground level, where we use the language to come up with web sites like this one, older, less sophisticated expressions, nouns, verbs and the like are not tossed away. Newer, more advanced ones are simply added on to them. Most web site designers have hundreds or even thousands of such bits of web site languages kicking around and filling up way too much space on their hard drives...
It goes something like this: When I have to add a feature to a web site, I generally look at existing code first to see if there is something closely related. When I find it, I basically say to myself 'It almost does what I want, but not quite, so let's do this'. And Voila! A new piece of code is born. It is much faster and cleaner (as in less prone to time-consuming late night debugging sessions) to adapt and add to existing code than to write it from scratch.
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