"Some folks have started voicing"... How old is the article!?
Lay off W3Schools
91–100 of 102 posts
Re: Lay off W3Schools
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
We have MDN, dochub, sitepoint, etc, they all have up-to-date, correct content. We don't need another one. What's hideous about them?
MDN: Too Mozilla centric. I certainly hate devs who make Firefox-only pages more than ones who look up on w3schools. And I've met a few of them ;) dochub: Where are the tutorials? Sitepoint: The structure is messy. It looks like a blog, but a historical structure is awful for learning. I want topic categories. Also lots of things I don't care about - books, courses - I just want references and tutorials! MDN is bette…
Have you used the MDN? It's hosted by Mozilla but it's an open wiki. Almost any bug or oddity in a browser will likely be listed. There are pages for essentially every extension for most browsers as well. Webkit's extensions live at https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/CSS/CSS_Reference/W... for example.
The MDN also has fantastic tutorials (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/CSS/Getting_Started is the CSS one) and lots of examples of good or complicated HTML5, JavaScript and CSS3.
I see the MDN catch a lot of unwarranted flack and i don't understand why. Shoot I use chrome as my main webrowser and I still spend most of my time on dochub.io (which is sources entirely from the MDN) and the MDN itself.
Re: Lay off W3Schools
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
MDN: Too Mozilla centric. I certainly hate devs who make Firefox-only pages more than ones who look up on w3schools. And I've met a few of them ;) dochub: Where are the tutorials? Sitepoint: The structure is messy. It looks like a blog, but a historical structure is awful for learning. I want topic categories. Also lots of things I don't care about - books, courses - I just want references and tutorials! MDN is bette…
Have you used the MDN? It's hosted by Mozilla but it's an open wiki. Almost any bug or oddity in a browser will likely be listed. There are pages for essentially every extension for most browsers as well. Webkit's extensions live at https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/CSS/CSS_Reference/W... for example. The MDN also has fantastic tutorials ( https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/CSS/Getting_Started is the CSS…
I use MDN, not extensively though. I like this site, it is useful and very well organized, but feature availability (browser & level) is not as well documented as in w3schools I find. Chrome is probably not the issue here, rather - let's name it - IE.
MDN is a great site, don't misunderstand me - but in this case I am not sure this is the right hoster. I used MDN for some JavaScript issues like one year ago, and it was then running well on FF but not at all on IE. Maybe they have all corrected that since, but I'm not seeing that clearly now.
dochub looks nice, but again it is not something for beginners.
Also, MDN is client only (which is one point making me say it is very Mozilla oriented). w3schools has this part about PHP which is very useful for beginners. Again, my point hasn't changed. MDN and others are more useful resources to experienced web devs than w3schools, but w3schools is the better point to begin with when you don't know about web development and want a clear overview.
Re: Lay off W3Schools
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good code makes crappy tutorials. If I was a moron, I don't care if the examples inadvertently summons swarms of locusts if I understand them quickly. Now, I would be all for W3Schools making their disclaimer more noticeable. It is there, though.
So true. Imagine your primary school art teacher telling you you were ignoring centuries of established neo-classical techniques by holding the brush wrong.
This is more like your primary school art teacher letting you stick the brush through your eardrum without saying anything.
Re: Lay off W3Schools
#95Re: Lay off W3Schools
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "That's the point of w3fools: w3s is not reliable..." This unreliable (albeit crystal-clear) source did not stop me from scoring a good portfolio and happy clients ( http://linkd.in/ON5eHL ).
I'll bite. It's possible that you have worked on more projects than are listed on Linkedin, but that's what you've offered as evidence of your "good portfolio" and growth as a developer (the reason, I assume, that you keep distancing yourself from those hapless beginners), so that's what I'll reply to. You have three web projects and a personal website all listed on your profile. 1. "Metasyllabus Initiative": This is…
> "Wordpress is great, though, because anyone can set it up and use it. Anyone."
Nothing is wrong with choosing an easy to use tool for the kinds of requirements clearly described in the about page.
> "Decision Tree Generator"
My client for this project insisted on many design decisions that I disagreed with. I also adopted broken code I was not allowed to fix, which includes the markup and CSS for the theme.
Not all of the code there reflects my knowledge, and anything that does might not be there because I wanted it to be. Not even all the bugs are mine. In fact, most of what you SEE there is not mine. Focus on the generator app only.
Also, I am writing a new version of that as we speak. It actually took a lot of convincing to abandon the horrible pop-up stateful form. Point is, I got repeat business because the code I wrote was well-tested and appreciated.
In short: The design of the site is not my own, but the generator itself is. Even so, I could not decide how it looked so I just pulled the levers. Whether you like the code or not, I am always in a process of learning and improving my craft regardless.
> "OmicronAlpha.org: This site is down."
I was the webmaster for one year and passed the title over as per the rules of the organization. I am no longer responsible for the site, so the listing shows only that I made it. Should it ever come back, it could be all blinking text for all I know.
I do appreciate you pointing out an outdated LinkedIn entry though. This has been fixed.
> "I don't know any serious web developers who would use Concrete5"
This is not an argument. I looked over my requirements, I wanted to use something new for my personal web site, and I picked something I'm happy with.
> "My point is that you're still a beginner. As a beginner, you don't know as much as the people you're arguing with."
I am certain I am still extremely ignorant, but that comes with the territory. I won't make an attempt to rank you, because I am sure you have your own experience to bring to the table. I respect you, and I have every right to ask that you respect me.
I don't aim to be the cock of the walk, but I will not allow you to push me to the level of a beginner in a public forum. While I am by no means a guru, I am competent, and am willing to have opinions you don't like even if I risk looking silly to those who misinterpret my claims.
I've been working for six years, and I have been doing more than what is listed on my profile. I am happy, my friends are happy and my clients are happy. I'm not rich, but I make enough money to support a good, healthy lifestyle and invest in my own retirement at an early age. I have used plenty of languages and tools, although I do not always take the time to share content because I tend to keep my services local. What you see online is only parts of me, and I am sure we would get along great if we met.
Now, my article goes beyond W3Schools and challenges what it means to effectively teach coding. I don't think you need good code to be a good teacher because there is a human element of making something understandable that goes outside professional standards of code quality. We can debate that until the sun goes down.
Being supportive of an inaccurate source for unconventional reasons does not invalidate my actual, relevant experience.
Re: Lay off W3Schools
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "How are people supposed to know that they need to go and find a separate security tutorial (and not a W3Schools one, they don't have one)?" Whenever they realize they don't understand something. This could happen by reflecting on the material or after making a mistake. > "Following that tutorial introduces massive security holes into a site." I've touched on this on other parts of this page.
> Whenever they realize they don't understand something. Which is quite likely to be when their customers' data gets leaked or altered. That's a really bad time to discover a hole in your understanding.
> "Which is quite likely to be when their customers' data..."
Who would hire someone who only has W3Schools knowledge? Are we really worried about them?
Re: Lay off W3Schools
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Whenever they realize they don't understand something. Which is quite likely to be when their customers' data gets leaked or altered. That's a really bad time to discover a hole in your understanding.
> "Which is quite likely to be when their customers' data..." Who would hire someone who only has W3Schools knowledge? Are we really worried about them?
How would a non-technical person hiring a freelance web developer to do their site know that developer learned everything from W3Schools and is going to leave gaping security holes?
Re: Lay off W3Schools
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "That's awful advice for beginners" It's not bad advice to suggest that developers be stupid if they are the type to learn from their mistakes. If they are not the type to learn from their mistakes, why are we worried about them?
Being given correct information but making mistakes, and then learning from those mistakes in your efforts to recreate the good advice, is a useful learning technique. Being given incorrect information, and making mistakes, and not knowing you've made mistakes, is not a useful learning technique. And while these people are making mistakes and learning from them their customers are suffering buggy code and everything…
> "Being given incorrect information, and making mistakes, and not knowing you've made mistakes, is not a useful learning technique."
W3Schools has pointed out that users take a risk with its content, and it made no claim over the quality of its code. The only element they have authority over is its clarity, and that is what's important. The information may be lacking, but I stick by my guns when I say that crap code can still make some concept that a tutorial revolves around clearer. If other elements are not relevant to the tutorial, I do not believe it is fair to blame the author for excluding them.
Re: Lay off W3Schools
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Whenever they realize they don't understand something. Which is quite likely to be when their customers' data gets leaked or altered. That's a really bad time to discover a hole in your understanding.
> "Which is quite likely to be when their customers' data..." Who would hire someone who only has W3Schools knowledge? Are we really worried about them?
> Who would hire someone who only has W3Schools knowledge?
And this pretty much negates your whole argument. If you ever plan on getting hired or being taken seriously enough to get clients, this isn't the resource. How pissed would you be to find out at an interview or after a breach that the site you used to learn all this stuff was the laughing stock of developers?