Web technology is not necessarily a struggle

If you have any experience in programming whatsoever, the following experience will probably sound familiar: just when you think you understand what’s going on, the results of your coding take an unexpected – and often unwanted – turn.

Figuring out what went wrong is usually a frustrating task. When trying to code, for instance, an entire website (meaning this is probably going to happen more than once) it might take a toll on your overall contentment in life.

What can we do about this serious issue?

Why type new codes when many others have already created wonderful codes for you to alter?

That’s right, most programmers don’t want other people to benefit from the result of their hard suffering. It hence seems like an anti-social thing to use their codes without permission (face it: politely asking them is a waste of time because you already know they wouldn’t want you to use their codes).

Theft is not an attractive solution for those of us that have polite manners.

Using standard templates various (web)hosts offer is a solution to spare the neat ones from huge amounts of dissatisfaction.

The issue here, though, is that these templates are often not customizable and you therefore would have to settle with a rather 1999 looking site. There’s no way those templates attract as much visitors as a siteowner’s unique lay-out that was made for the subject the website focuses on.

Some generous programmers have set up websites filled with (albeit copyrighted) modern-looking themes that were made for you to use.

The problem here is the fact you have to live with lines such as

“CREATED BY BUGzBUNNY*~ @ OURLAYOUTzL00KBezT.COM – DON’T REMOVE THIS TAG PLEASE”

that are (if you’re unlucky) placed very prominently in the lay-out. You’re never allowed to alter the codes, and the neat people among us of course will play by the rules.

...wait, they wouldn’t play by the rules, they’ll just stick with them.

Anyway, I’ve tried it all: unsightly standard templates that you get sick of after about a day, customizable templates that – no matter how gorgeous your Photoshop creations are – still feel dated, and I’ve done it the depressing way: starting from scratch…

But nothing turned out as well as “stealing” other people’s codes and using them to create wonderful sites that resembled what I had in mind before I started.

People with neat manners may justify it by thinking of the web as a communist dream: worldwide common ownership. Whatever anyone puts out there is free to be used by anyone else.

Brilliant. Thank you Friedrich Engels!