The recommendation here is essentially "Start with this very common design (a Bootstrap theme), then add/change {something}, and voila!" which is obviously miss

The recommendation here is essentially "Start with this very common design (a Bootstrap theme), then add/change {something}, and voila!" which is obviously missing a significant "something" in terms of instruction. I believe that there is a way to acquire design intuition of the kind I seek as a programmer to bridge me into more robust design work, even if it takes time and practice, but reading another article telling me to use Bootstrap themes isn't it.