Now that MDN is an excellent resource, and MS finally made MSDN documentation more search-engine friendly with docs.microsoft.com I'm hoping it will mean W3Schools will be relegated to lower ranked google results.

I don't know how they're able to hold their place still, I really don't.

To be fair, they offered a complete JS reference when none existed (at least that I knew of), in format which was easy to understand. I don't really know where the hate against w3s comes from... I still find them easier to use than MDN for quick lookups.

It's just a real weird site.

It doesn't really teach you anything in depth, opting instead to just spit out a bunch of examples.

As someone who used it initially years back starting out, I would have appreciated if it actually gave me context about how things worked and why rather than just copying and pasting code.

The only real reason it seems to get attention is due to the feedback loop of its ranking. Users see it as a top result and assume it must be some sort of authority on web development.

It has nothing to do with the W3C despite the name. Not to imply that beginners might know about W3C in the first place but still!

I wonder if it's still the same team of 3 developers running the place? Here's a writeup about it http://w3schools.sinsixx.com/about/about_refsnes.asp.htm

> It doesn't really teach you anything in depth, opting instead to just spit out a bunch of examples.

You spelt the very reason it is (was?) popular. The documentation/tutorial that gets traffic isn't the one with the most in-depth technical treatment, but, one which gives accessible examples to get started.

Examples are super useful; for the cases I've used w3schools, their example either worked almost directly or at least showed me how to do something quickly. Keep in mind that I'm not a real web dev, so my usecases are trivial stuff.

Soooo... They were the original StackOverflow ;)

The hate comes from little inaccuracies that have caused hours of stress and confusion. It is probably not as bad now but I recall getting pretty frustrated after spending hours debugging only to find out the docs were wrong.

w3schools won because they have absolutely nailed their design. Compare:

https://www.w3schools.com/JSREF/jsref_slice_array.asp

The very first thing is an example. The contrast of the fonts is easy on the eyes. You'll be definitely writing code using this method within minutes.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Web/JavaScript/Referen...

The very first thing you see is a huge green box "Why does MDN look different?", which is completely irrelevant to what I'm looking for. Scrolling down reveals thin gray on gray fonts which make the page hard to read. The amount of information is excessive if you're in a hurry.

Note that it's called W3Schools, not "w3cschools". Lots of people assume they have something to do with the W3C because they named themselves something confusingly similar, but in fact they are not related to the W3C at all.

What's "kerrspit"?

Presumably the noise of spitting in a particularly disgruntled way.