Lorem ipsum, lorem100 does it ring a bell. If it does, I'm sure you are or have worked with a designer who uses it as a placeholder in their designs. But, what is this lorem ipsum anyways.
Purpose
The text lorem ipsum is used to create a natural looking block of text whether it be a sentence, a paragraph or a page. As the text itself is meaningless, it would not distract the designer or anyone looking at it from the layout. No meaning means no controversy as well. Just plain simple dummy text. Now I know, you might have already known about it. And I won't be boring you with a history lesson here. (Lorem is being used for a long time in print industry as well).
Usage in coding
This text is used by web designers to put dummy text for their page layouts, to get a look and feel of how the end product might look like. Also used by application developers before they know the real content to be used in their designs. There is something called Emmet which makes it easy to uses this dummy text. If you are using VS Code Emmet comes built in. While most of the modern IDEs supporting it as an extension. You just type lorem100 to get a 100 words text to be used. And the number can be changed as per your needs. But is it good to use lorem in every design and what could be its downsides.
There are people who choose it while others oppose, I personally think it is a good starting point when you have no clue what text is to be included. You can make a good layout by adding the required number of words. Keep in mind though, don't try to fit in the layout as per the dummy text included. Instead, make a layout keeping in mind that the text can longer or shorter than what you tested with. If not, your design might break and it will become a nightmare afterwards.
That said, there are various alternatives available in case you don't like the plain old lorem ipsum. Let us have a look at some of them.
Fun Alternatives to explore
Litsum It uses text from books as a filler. Good incase you want to brush up your literature. Though can distract you from a layout if the text is too interesting.
Slipsum If you are fan of making mock-ups with cursing in it slipsum should be your goto tool.
Zombieipsum Are you a zombie apocalypse fan. Then worry not, zombieipsum has got your back.
Fillerama If not zombies, how about science fiction. Fillerama is all you need.
Pirateipsum Avast Ye! If you know what I mean, this one is just for you.
And the list is endless, but time is short. So here is a list of various other lipsum / dummy text generators. Do check it out to see if anything suits your tastes.