There are many ways that a Web designer or developer can build a site, from hand coding the entire thing to using tried-and-true software like Adobe Dreamweaver (affiliate link) or other WYSIWYG/heavily-assisted programs.  Over my career, I've used a little bit of everything, eventually settling into a hand-coded environment using skEdit.  But a recent blog, specifically a line in a blog post made me take another look at these options and shortcuts.

Are shortcuts cheating?

A line Laura Otero had written in a recent post highlighting one of the latest darlings of the CMS world, SquareSpace, stirred up some questions I've wrestled with over the past few years.  Is it "cheating" to use systems that take all or a good majority of the legwork out of Web development?  I'll be honest, some of these shortcuts and snippets are very nice and I've saved myself quite a bit of time with some of them, but I still rely heavily on what I've learned through my years of hand-coding.  That being said, if someone takes paths of ease to complete a project, are they less of a professional for doing so?  What would their peers think? 

I guess it's all in how you look at it, how much self-guilt and self-imposed peer pressure you put on yourself, that determines the answer.  I still feel the answer may very.  As long as the client is getting a great product and it meets/exceeds their goals, then who's to judge the path that was taken to get there?  As long as the ideas are original, and the execution is sound, who can argue with that?  What say you?