Depends upon the project your working on. Here latly it seems like all my clients want the ability to update their site themselvs with out having to get into code or buy programs, or even have me teach them a simple 1-2-3 step process.  A lot of what my company sees is the client who has already been with a company and is tired of the high costs of updates, and or the retarted costs of hourly fees for updates or changes.  They want to be able to have the site they want like they want to bring their vision alive and then be given the ability to change, update, and discard any or all parts of the site.

This is a double edged sword simply because you let your clients work with your code and they do not know what they are doing, when they mess it up they want you to fix it.  Thus using CMS is best, but as a designer you do nto want to be limited to just CMS templates, and most project budgets do not allow for the time to have someone to design a new tmeplate to suit that client.  I find that I can use a custom cms style site where I can design the site as I need to then add in the cms capabilities to the areas where the client needs to edit, and change.

I suppose CMS isn't entirely 'no-hand-coding-required-at-all', unless you're extremely delighted with the default cosmetics and layouts, and yes, if the question was, which is easier in web design, CMS would be the answer, with themes n such.

But in the context of the proposed question above, I'd say that the best approach to web design is still hand coding, as you get to built your codes from the ground up. Apart from how it renders in the various browsers, you're basically in control of anything and everything related to web design.

Personally I think it depends on the project. If I am designing a site
that will only need occasional updates then I think static HTML
code is fine. If a project calls for constant updating, then I think that a CMS is
the best route to take.