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They’re the best resource for learning web technologies. They’ll tell you in one plain sentence what you need to know, with simple, concrete examples, whereas M

by d13 5y ago

They’re the best resource for learning web technologies. They’ll tell you in one plain sentence what you need to know, with simple, concrete examples, whereas MDN, on the other hand, is a baroque mess which, after paragraph upon paragraph of rambling legalize will often leave you more confused than when you started.

dmt0 5y ago
For learning, they're OK. However, most of the time when you're doing real work, what you really want is specs and complete APIs. At that point w3schools in the results becomes a distraction. I'm totally blocking them.
yesenadam 5y ago
That's exactly my experience too. I've learnt so much from w3schools. Also being able to quickly try stuff out and tinker with it and see the effect instantly is so handy.
berkut 5y ago
Yeah, as someone (re)learning modern CSS/HTML, I really don't understand the hate they get. For a beginner (at CSS/HTML anyway, I'm an HPC engineer otherwise with lots of low-level experience), I think it's a great resource, with good examples too. I can only assume they used to be different?
- SOLAR_FIELDS 5y ago
  In terms of the site design itself, it's always been like that - the w3schools site has always had the clean, readable presentation (and it's a pretty easy argument to make that it's much more approachable for a newbie than MDN). The main complaint was with the content. In the past there were some pretty big problems with content on w3schools. Often common footguns (of which there are many in Javascript) were not covered and newbies were encouraged to do things that were bad in the short and long term. IIRC one of the more egregious examples of this was sample code that taught developers to write code vulnerable to SQL injection. Supposedly most of this has been fixed, though I don't really use w3schools that much so I can't really vouch for its integrity or lack thereof these days.
  - radlad 5y ago
    They used to publish vulnerable code as examples without any context. For example... XSS: https://web.archive.org/web/20060722051641/http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_forms.asp https://web.archive.org/web/20060722051641/http://www.w3scho... / https://web.archive.org/web/20060722073110/http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_post.asp https://web.archive.org/web/20060722073110/http://www.w3scho... / https://web.archive.org/web/20060722072840/http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_get.asp https://web.archive.org/web/20060722072840/http://www.w3scho... Unauthenticated sessions: https://web.archive.org/web/20060716141638/http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_cookies.asp https://web.archive.org/web/20060716141638/http://www.w3scho... MySQL injection: https://web.archive.org/web/20110412041949/http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_mysql_insert.asp https://web.archive.org/web/20110412041949/http://www.w3scho... Nothing directly wrong with this one but prepared queries were not well understood at the time: https://web.archive.org/web/20060718041049/http://www.w3schools.com/php/func_mysql_query.asp https://web.archive.org/web/20060718041049/http://www.w3scho... They were very easy to learn from and thus widely popular, but missed critical security context.
davchana 5y ago
Exactly. I do coding for hobby, just html, css, js; & in past php too. If I quickly need to find some function to do xyz or a tag or property, or to find the capabilities of some function, its params, w3schools is easy to comprehend than mdn (which very rarely I have been to).

by d13 5y ago

dmt0 5y ago

For learning, they're OK. However, most of the time when you're doing real work, what you really want is specs and complete APIs. At that point w3schools in the results becomes a distraction. I'm totally blocking them.

yesenadam 5y ago

That's exactly my experience too. I've learnt so much from w3schools. Also being able to quickly try stuff out and tinker with it and see the effect instantly is so handy.

berkut 5y ago

Yeah, as someone (re)learning modern CSS/HTML, I really don't understand the hate they get. For a beginner (at CSS/HTML anyway, I'm an HPC engineer otherwise with lots of low-level experience), I think it's a great resource, with good examples too. I can only assume they used to be different?

SOLAR_FIELDS 5y ago
In terms of the site design itself, it's always been like that - the w3schools site has always had the clean, readable presentation (and it's a pretty easy argument to make that it's much more approachable for a newbie than MDN). The main complaint was with the content. In the past there were some pretty big problems with content on w3schools. Often common footguns (of which there are many in Javascript) were not covered and newbies were encouraged to do things that were bad in the short and long term. IIRC one of the more egregious examples of this was sample code that taught developers to write code vulnerable to SQL injection. Supposedly most of this has been fixed, though I don't really use w3schools that much so I can't really vouch for its integrity or lack thereof these days.
- radlad 5y ago
  They used to publish vulnerable code as examples without any context. For example... XSS: https://web.archive.org/web/20060722051641/http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_forms.asp https://web.archive.org/web/20060722051641/http://www.w3scho... / https://web.archive.org/web/20060722073110/http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_post.asp https://web.archive.org/web/20060722073110/http://www.w3scho... / https://web.archive.org/web/20060722072840/http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_get.asp https://web.archive.org/web/20060722072840/http://www.w3scho... Unauthenticated sessions: https://web.archive.org/web/20060716141638/http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_cookies.asp https://web.archive.org/web/20060716141638/http://www.w3scho... MySQL injection: https://web.archive.org/web/20110412041949/http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_mysql_insert.asp https://web.archive.org/web/20110412041949/http://www.w3scho... Nothing directly wrong with this one but prepared queries were not well understood at the time: https://web.archive.org/web/20060718041049/http://www.w3schools.com/php/func_mysql_query.asp https://web.archive.org/web/20060718041049/http://www.w3scho... They were very easy to learn from and thus widely popular, but missed critical security context.

davchana 5y ago

Exactly. I do coding for hobby, just html, css, js; & in past php too. If I quickly need to find some function to do xyz or a tag or property, or to find the capabilities of some function, its params, w3schools is easy to comprehend than mdn (which very rarely I have been to).