When comparing Udemy vs W3Schools, the Slant community recommends Udemy for most people. In the question“What are the best websites to learn to code?” Udemy is ranked 8th while W3Schools is ranked 21st. The most important reason people chose Udemy is:
If one course doesn't meet your needs, there is a sea of other courses to choose from.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Wide range of courses
If one course doesn't meet your needs, there is a sea of other courses to choose from.
Pro Value for money
A +10 hour high quality course for under $20 is great value.
Pro Regular discounts
Often run discounts 50 - 90% off resulting in sub $20 courses.
Pro Offers intermediate and advanced courses
Udemy offers plenty of courses for beginner programmers, but also has a large variety of more advanced courses to choose from.
Pro Some courses are free
Pro Courses available in over 80 languages
Pro Friendly community
Both on site and on various social networks Udemy aims to create a community of friendly people that can help each other out.
Pro Quality of top courses
The quality of top courses (+4.0 rating & high enrollment) is exceptional.
Pro Easy to learn
All the tutorials are written in a straightforward and easy to understand way.
Pro Built in editor
Almost every example has a "try it yourself" button which opens up an editor in a new tab. It allows you to play with the example code and see how it works.
Pro Well organized tutorials
All of the lessons are separated into their own pages, which makes it easy to learn about specific concepts.
Pro Great source from Google search's perspective
Cons
Con Quality varies
The quality control for the content offered is fairly limited. As there are so many different instructors offering courses on Udemy, many of which lack formal training and teaching experience since anyone can be a teacher on Udemy, the quality varies quite a bit between the different courses.
Con Most courses are expensive
While Udemy does offer free courses, most of them are around $100.
Con Difficult to take multiple (10+) courses at the same time
The system becomes messy and hard to follow if you plan on using the site to learn more than a handful of things at once.
Con Outdated practices / problem solutions
The practices that are shown to solve the problems at hand are rarely, if at all, updated. Usually, their tutorials and learning material is updated only after they see their profits drop.
Con Doesn't care about teaching right
There are multiple errors in the data they show. Although the solutions they show work, they will lead to unmaintainable code. That happens even when the maintainable code alternatives are as easy or accessible to new programmers as the alternatives.
Con Certifications not recognized
Many professionals in IT agree that w3s certifications are not recognized by them and are deemed useless. Good luck finding any respectable professional that accepts a w3s certification.
Con It is for profit
What defines what goes is and what gets fixed on w3schools is what gives them profit and what doesn't (through their ads system).
Con Written tutorials only
While many learning resources offer a mixture of media in their courses (such as videos, challenges etc.), w3schools offers only written tutorials and code editors. This makes w3schools more beneficial as a quick reference rather than a primary learning resource.