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09 Jan 11 W3Fools: Teaching W3Schools a lesson

If yo' cool, yo' pity the W3Schools!

Reading through my news feed over at Github I noticed that the esteemed Paul Irish had created a new Git repository. Because I have an inquisitive mind I am nosey, I clicked through to investigate things and came across something quite interesting… But first some background information.

When I started out learning web development, I frequently looked things up on W3Schools.com. Now, thanks to my IDE, other resources and years of experience I don’t really visit there any more. And, also,  because of the… uhm… other reason. The one that has been circulating the web for years but somehow never gained much momentum. The elephant-in-the-room reason. I am, of course, referring to the fact that the information over at W3Schools is, in general, outdated, incomplete or wrong up to the  point of were it has become a bit of an embarrassment.

I guess that the main reason no-one ever really tore into this, is the fact that most of us start out in web development with a lot of help from W3Schools.com. Either we’ve moved on and don’t look back, or we look back with fondness and think there’s no real harm. I’ve read a lot of comments on this topic where the W3Schools are complimented for the no-knowledge-needed explanations. Sadly, thought learning may be made easy, what people are learning is a set of bad habits and incorrect theories. There is a general tendency, because there isn’t another source as readily available, we should forgive it for being decidedly less than perfect. To me that sounds just a bit too much like an excuse for staying with a wife beater, but hey, to each his own…

Things, however, might be about to change. A few brave souls have bundled together their wisdom and knowledge and decided to take on the task of clearing up this mess. Only not in the way you might think. Remember that Git repository I mentioned? It’s named W3Fools. It is a self-descibed Takedown of W3Schools. Despite its maintained popularity there are plenty of other better resources out there gaining ground. Besides, giants have been toppled before. Remember Goliath? Or Experts-exchange?

The site W3Fools has been registered but will not launch until next week, so this should be fun to watch unravel!

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