I think the hard-code solution is fine for now when there are a handful, but it gets thrown out the window when the added size gets too large.
I think that what you talk about in the last sentence is actually healthy for steem and fine for all of us, if steemit is crap and no one wants to use it then let the market and the users decide which apps and sites become successful. I think it's actually an inevitability that steemit itself pretty much dies, considering how slow steemit's growth has been, how few users actually stay on the platform aside from the boom times, and the fact that historically blog and long-form platforms have all either ceased to exist or evolved into different models than the one steemit tries to emulate poorly.