I need to build a house, what kind of hammer should I buy?

Hammers and word processors have a much lesser legacy impact upon building and writing than software does upon making web sites and applications. If you choose wrong with the former, you can very easily change your mind and avoid having to redo anything. The same is definitely not true of the latter.

There is a continuum between a basic tool and a medium. Hammers and word processors are basic tools. The basic tool of hacking is the word processor. A piece of software, or programming language, is much further along that continuum. A better simile for software and websites might be, "I want to construct a place for people to live. What kind of building should I design?"

If someone asked me that they need to build a website to promote X without giving any more details, I'd say try Blogger or Wordpress. It may be just what they need, why make a point about passion or drive if they want to build a simple website? If they want to do something more sophisticated, they will quickly find out the limitations and ask the right questions.

A better metaphor would be "what should I make it out of?" You can build a house out of straw, sticks, bricks, or titanium. But these have different advantages, drawbacks, and costs.

When it comes down to it, metaphors for software are almost always particularly flawed.

But if someone doesn't use (postgresql|mysql|appengine|lisp|python|rails|dojo|jquery|prototype|mac|linux|win) for their project, it will just die!

;-)