Your analogy by the way isnt particularly great, If you had said that its like telling someone who wants to learn to dance that they need to learn how to walk first... then i would agree. But i dont think you need to learn about parts of the body to be able to dance.
You're missing my point.
Understanding human anatomy tells you a lot about the mechanics of how the human body moves. It's complicated, detailed and technical. In that way, it's like PHP.
Walking is a simpler, easier way of moving than dancing. Learning PHP is not simpler and easier than learning the fundamentals of wordpress and it's capabilities.
Of course any good resource to help someone learn wordpress will include elements of HTML, CSS and PHP - and there will always come a point where you need more than the built-in functionality gives you, but you still
start with what wordpress gives you.
I'm reminded of the first step of a recipe for jugged hare from an early cookbook which (apocryphally) said "first catch your hare"*. The whole point of wordpress is that it has already caught, skinned, deboned, cubed, packaged and refrigerated the hare for you.
Lyds
*turns out that that's actually a misreading, it actually said "case your hare", i.e. skin it. But it's too useful a saying to be ruined by the boring old truth.
