Equity should be given to individuals who are critical to the success of your company, individuals who are indispensable. Too many companies give equity to individuals who can be replaced once the company becomes self-sustaining. Equity shouldn't be given to "good" coders just because they contributed in the beginning. Equity should be saved for the "great/exceptional" coders that you may attract as your business grows.
The empirical evidence suggests startups don't work that way. All the most successful startups had great techical people from the beginning. If you don't have good technical people at the start, you never reach the point where you attract them.
I don't dispute that. What if you have great technical people in the beginning who happen to have no equity stake? A talented developer is a talented developer (regardless of how they are compensated)...equity doesn't make them any better, does it?
You don't think a founding coder is indispensable to your company? Are you saying that if this person decided, one week from launch, to quit, it wouldn't matter? If so, why have them on the team at all?
Web applications are a lot easier to develop. I think too many people are still applying methodologies that applied to more "traditional" forms of software development. If I have a good JavaScript hacker bail on me a week before launch, I don't think it would be extremely difficult to find another good JavaScript hacker.
