Comment by sachingulaya | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sachingulaya | Hacker News Reader

Except w3schools isn't approachable and it isn't for beginners. It's jargon loaded and filled with a bunch of information that means nothing to beginners.

Let's look the page for explaining 'div': http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_div.asp

"The <div> tag defines a division or a section in an HTML document.

The <div> tag is used to group block-elements to format them with styles."

Oh, I get it. Its for grouping block-elements(??) to format them with styles(??).

The above is followed by this fantastic tip: "Tip: The <div> element is very often used together with CSS, to layout a web page."

Looking at their "examples" its an in-browser html editor with un-annotated code that makes a table suitable for the web circa 1995.

Then it trails off in to sparse definitions of the attributes for the div tag with an excessive amount of discussion about web standards compatibility.

Normally I wouldn't gripe about an awful tutorial site but w3schools consistently ranks high in google queries for questions about html tags. Personally I've never left w3schools with an answer to the question that led me there. That signals to me that it is indeed a failure.

From my personal experience when I was new to html and css, I was constantly referencing w3schools to look up things. Of course, your mileage may vary, but I was happy using it.

> "Except w3schools isn't approachable and it isn't for beginners."

My experience says the opposite. Sorry.

There's nothing to be 'sorry' about.

I made websites sporadically from '97-'03 and then started again in Dec '11. My criticism of w3schools is from my personal experience with the site over the last year.

I was surprised when I found out that w3schools actually intends to teach people html/css. Until recently, I thought it was universally acknowledged that they're a content farm.

A content farm with quizzes, a live editor and sequential lessons?

Agreed. As someone who just began coding less than a year ago, I can honestly say that it has rarely if ever helped me. I've found other free sites like Chris Coyer's "css-tricks" to be far more beneficial. That said, it is a free service and I can appreciate that, but it's time for some improvements.

Yes, a random page in w3schools is for developers, not for beginners. And yes, they do have tutorials where beginners should begin with. After the tutorial, they indeed know what a block element and a style is.

Google downgraded w3schools in search. It used to be constently the first result. Now it is rather 5th or 6th.

If you are a beginner maybe you shouldn't start by reading about the <div> element... Just like when you start programming you shouldn't start with recursion. It does help to start at the beginning and work your way through to <div>. I already had basic HTML/CSS knowledge when I found the site so not sure how it is to beginners, but I found your example to be a bit unfair.

What's wrong in starting programming with recursion? It is more intuitive since you learn about it in school...

I completely agree. Back in the early 2000s, I remember trying to learn HTML and CSS from them and understanding very little about a whole lot. I would say that the experience effectively put me off webdev until just recently.

> Except w3schools isn't approachable and it isn't for beginners.

I too had the exact opposite experience. I found the HTML, CSS, and Javascript tutorials extremely intuitive and well-presented when I was in 7th grade. I ate them up.

Agreed. I don't depend on it any more, but w3schools helped me make the transition from WYSIWG web site building to hand coding.

Same here. Vastly more readable for a novice (like myself at the time) than W3C.

It might be approachable, but that doesn't make it any less horrible.

Yes, some people find it useful when they don't know better, but I suspect those people at that point they would have found almost any tutorial useful.

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