I used the Design view for years and yes it writes the code for you but it puts all the css in the code as well. Making for very bloated code that is horrible for updating. If you want to change a text color you have to repeat the task over and over and over where if you use external css you can change it once.
Plus most people use the design mode and insert tables.

But if you are willing to learn how to hand code you can still use Dreamweaver in "code view". It's got lots of great features such as their css component, javascript behaviors, adding links is very easy as well as many many other features.
Pete has made me realize it's an expensive program to use as a hand coding program. But if you have it use it .. I do!