The article in the top of this thread is interesting. I can just add that in Hugo we have tried to make it simple for the simple stuff, but also make the "harder stuff" possible. We have naming conventions for layout files to keep it DRY (to avoid having to set "layout: blog" or something in every content file (you can)) and we have some special meaning behind "index.md" and "_index.md" -- which among other things allows for a navigable and not so rigid content tree. We even have plans to, in near future, to extend that tree into the content files themselves (ToC, paragraphs, sections). We may have different trade-offs than the article writer: With many sections and thousands of files in a deeply nested content tree, Hugo's layout system its speed may make more sense. Or not. So we do try, but it is hard to make everyone happy. I'm bep on GitHub.
I am bep, the lead maintainer of Hugo. A plugin system will happen in Hugo, and I don't think it will take too long to get there -- we have been thinking about it for some time, and it feels natural to have that before we call it 1.0. CMS like editing is something that could live well outside of Hugo, me thinks.
One could also argue that developers also has some impact on speed in an app like Hugo. The measured speed increase from Hugo 0.16 was 40/60 Go vs Developer.
There are some hurdles yet to be had for the non-tech person. But I would claim that when he/she gets the split panel up and running with the markdown editor on the left and the live-reloading browser on the right, it is no way going back to whatever Wordpress feeds you.
There are initiatives writing some nice clients on top of static site generators such as Hugo and Jekyll, but in my head you then lose out some of the most valuable features of Hugo, speed and simplicity.
Use what makes you happy/gets the job done. I'm bep and one of the Hugo core devs, so I'm biased.
But I'm also a heavy Hugo user.
For me speed is very important. And with Hugo's great live reload, the editing of content and styles while getting instant feedback in the browser, it doesn't get much better than that.
Hugo 0.17 was released two days ago with native multilingual support. Important for some bloggers, but a pretty huge thing for documentation sites.