I agree, I love w3schools.

They provide real examples for real-world uses right on the page.

It was offensively bad and incorrect, and while I've heard it has improved since I think a lot of people just remember how it used to be and don't use it.

It has probably improved a lot. It seemed like garbage a few years ago. Today it feels trustworthy and useful. I don't know what changed.

I still prefer MDN. I trust it to have up to date information. It was always very good and it has also improved, including the interactive examples.

They had functional but inaccurate articles (in terms of best practices and long term solutions). I avoided them for a time but I must admit they listened and amended their tutorials, which is more than a lot of websites can say.

I never knew W3Schools had such a bad reputation. I learned HTML from that site almost a decade ago and found it pretty helpful.

I loved their Try it Online!

Historically, at least, it had a lot of examples that technically did what they were supposed to do, but in ways that you really, really, really shouldn't be doing them.

I knew many developers that used w3schools that thought it was official source because w3c, I know it's not completely the sites fault but they named the domain. That's one reason I dislike, additional the quality of w3schools is compared with mdn for beginners that are not interested into the details.

I just remember them gluing strings in how to use MySQL in PHP article.

See https://www.w3fools.com/

It's more a historical thing. Over a decade ago they were always on top, with often wrong/misleading/bad practice/insecure/simplified stuff. And lots of people thought of them as some kinde official entity because of their name similarity with W3C / w3.org

It's much better now, though. But for lots of old school frontenders the reputation stuck.

It still heavily lacks in quality in some areas, while making it seem like it is well-written. I just recently started blocking it.

Somewhat the same issue as the hilariously named "experts exchange" site back in the day.

> it's not offensively bad either

In your opinion. W3fools only pulled an “it’s ok now bro, don’t sue us” update. Anytime I give it a go, I’m still presented with inaccurate and harmfully incomplete results.

Want to learn from a “for dummies” website? Be my guest. But my hate is fully justified.

> hate for w3schools

w3 usually just gives me the answer i need to get shit done asap.

mdn is a technical reference. useful. but irritating when you just need a quick explanation.

w3schools = :/

mdn = :O

Use your fav llm for that

w3 schools was a good resource, but to me it often feels like fluff.

I’ll still click on w3schools but it’s not bringing much to the table and usually I’ll end up back at MDN anyway (big respect to the MDN teams).

Given the choice I’d probably block w3schools just so I save those couple seconds a month when I click back and in to MDN.

I barely see Pinterest in search results .

I find it overwhelms any kind of image search.

Thank god for MDN...Wish I had it when I was learning HTML.

> I've never understood the hate for w3schools.

Same. It's been my go to reference for SQL these days. Unless there's some alternative that I've missed out on

w3schools is only bad in comparison with MDN, but it still always rises to the top. I don’t think people have a problem with w3schools as such, but with the fact it always bumps MDN.

W3schools intentionally placed themselves as a representation of the W3C (similar to what Fedex does with its name) and sold, still does I'm sure, certificates under that misconception. These were worthless. This is in addition to the other complaints.