[fbemployee1234]

How many successful businesses have you launched doing things “the right way”?

The point is there are many paths to success. Maybe candy japan didn’t do things the way you think they should be done (it’s frankly rude to refer to template hacking as cargo cult programming; we’re talking design here, not programming). But despite their “primitive approach”, they’ve been successful in multiple ways.

OP has taught me quite a bit with their experience, whereas your negative tone has taught me nothing except you believe you know how things should be done.

Honestly, you sound like a know it all.

[Theodores]

I get your point, but have you ever found a theme that hasn't came along with an extraordinary amount of bloat, technical debt and featuritis?

Have you ever worked for an agency where a 'theme from Theme Forest' was deemed professionally acceptable?

The fundamentals have changed for web development but nobody gets off the hamster wheel to learn the fundamentals. The web doesn't have to be an obstacle course of hacks, polyfills, libraries, frameworks and other crutches any more. It also doesn't have to be full of fancy build tools, CSS compilers and other things that make web development accessible for the first time in 20 years.

I preferred to do my own homework when I was at school, not copy what everyone else thought the answers were, changing details around.

There is an intimidating thing going on with web development and the increasing specialisation. No one can hope of being able to create a web page due to this atmosphere. But so many people - a decade or two ago - got started writing actual HTML, not assuming it is all too hard and you have to just hack someone else's work. The industry is lacking these people now and is becoming less diverse.

Frontend development isn't a creative medium if people are just using frameworks from yesteryear and taking on technical debt from themes whilst busying themselves with the latest buzzword bingo. Things like content, accessibility and document structure matter, it is no good just going for a visual design and working backwards to the inevitable 'div soup'. Something has to change.

[fbemployee1234]

You make a principled point that I respect. I’m generally trying to get shit done. They aren’t always at odds with each other, but often are.

Personally, I hate web design and layout, so I want to do as little of it as possible. But I know I need a good looking site to be taken seriously. Templates have helped me out and generally last long enough that I can afford to hire a “real” designer.

Also, templates are $50 for a beautiful one. There are 2-3 OOM difference in cost.