I want to share with you something that I was lucky enough to find very early while learning web development.

Audience

The intended audience for this post is web developers, as the information is only useful to them, but anyone who reads it might learn something.

Background

As most people know, I have been very interested in web development, which I have been learning and working on for quite some time. When I started learning, like most people, Google was my best friend. Anything I needed to know about web development, I would search on Google. Anyone who started learning web development this way should recognize the name w3schools, which is commonly ranked very high in Google's results. Fortunately, I also am a big fan of StackOverflow, and frequently ask questions and search for answers on there as well. Fortunately, one day early in my learning days, I stumbled across this comment on StackOverflow, which is in response to a question that referenced w3schools.

w3schools is a terrible reference. Please avoid it, and don't trust information they publish.

and the next comment:

check out: w3fools.com for evidence of w3schools poor quality

I suggest that you read w3fools, not only to see the argument against w3schools, but also because you will learn a lot of small nuances about web development in doing so.

Conclusion

Because it can sometimes provide incorrect information, and typically when I end up on the site, its for information I don't know, I wanted to avoid the site altogether. As suggested at the bottom of w3fools here, I blocked it from my Google results.

After educating myself on this matter, I turned to this StackOverflow question which helped shape my ultimate opinion. Read through the question and answers yourself, but my takeaway can be best summed up with the following excerpt from this answer:

In short, we should be thinking for ourselves when deciding what specific page is a good reference, not relying on a blanket statement made by a 3rd party.

Which is really just a good rule to follow in life.