I love D3, but its a library not a language.
Why is D3 so Verbose?
21–30 of 75 posts
Re: Why is D3 so Verbose?
#22Note: the example is a misconception and not what's meant by "binding to data." In D3, binding to data refers to using the `.data()` method to supply an object (typically an array) which you can then use in a function callback in the accessors, so like `.attr('x1', d => /* access individual array item here */)`. This allows you to easily bind a dataset to a graphical representation and use its attributes to inform th…
This is very fair: I went for a metaphorical explanation, rather than a literal one. (For instance, I'd actually have had to write down the code for an SVG, and I was quickly writing this on my lunch break).
The `.selectAll().data().join()` data binding method (or `.enter()` on older versions) is very intuitive once you understand it, but for the layman coming in, it's inaccessible AF. I fudged a little in my explanation to make it more accessible. But hey. That's learning.
Re: Why is D3 so Verbose?
#23I love D3, but its a library not a language.
Agreed. I fudged quite a lot in my post to make it accessible to the layman. Triee to explain to a UX designer I know that "D3 is a library for JavaScript that..." And I saw their brain switch off live in front of me.
Semantics matter more than literals sometimes.
*EDIT: Grammar. I was typing on my phone. Soz.
Re: Why is D3 so Verbose?
#24I'd say because JavaScript is insufficiently expressive. No macros, no arrow (pipe) operator, and the premier way of writing it is 4x as verbose than what I'd consider reasonable. D3 is a great library though.
Uh, there are arrow operators in JS. D3.JS in Action Third Edition exclusively uses arrow operators.
(Trust me. I don't know jack about JavaScript, I had to get through the MDN docs to understand what they were, and once I did, made a whole lot more sense).
Re: Why is D3 so Verbose?
#25This is why I've always found it weird that people consider D3 to be a charting tool. Yes, people have used it to build a lot of charts, but it's really just a streaming data processing tool. It doesn't provide anything specific to charting[0]. All of that part, you're still left to figure out on your own. [0] At least in the core, I'm not too familiar with the full ecosystem and what is considered official in terms…
Yaaasss. I think of it as being able to use a pencil to draw charts (and do creative stuff like Florence Nightingale's original polar area graph), instead of having a stencil that can draw things for you. It's a way to visually manipulate the DOM in a way if you're comfortable with data.
You can simply just use Tableau or Power BI and take screenshots otherwise.
Re: Why is D3 so Verbose?
#26recently i've been having a lot of success with working with d3 + solid.js. I use d3 as the data processing layer, and solid for actually rendering svgs from the data. the combination is lovely, you get all the power of d3, while the parts that usually end up verbose are written succinctly in jsx. and it's a lot less pain than doing it in react, because the mental models of solid/d3 feel much more aligned
I'll check that out. At the moment I'm just building up a bunch of template code which I'll re-use. But might check out solid.js.
Re: Why is D3 so Verbose?
#27Because the alternative is big config files or a declarative DSL. Builder pattern works really well here to keep things simple.
Re: Why is D3 so Verbose?
#28All right, I got nerdsniped into writing a "yes and" sort of thing even though I agree with the gist of this article :) https://macwright.com/2025/08/21/why-d3-is-so-verbose-anothe...
Ahhhhh. Thanks man. And totally nerding out here because YES. ANIMATIONS. Animations is why I fell in love with wanting to learn D3 in 2019. You can do things as you transition between data steps, that honestly, has been such a pain in the behind to try with anything else. I'm not a web developer. I'm a data guy.
Re: Why is D3 so Verbose?
#29Note: the example is a misconception and not what's meant by "binding to data." In D3, binding to data refers to using the `.data()` method to supply an object (typically an array) which you can then use in a function callback in the accessors, so like `.attr('x1', d => /* access individual array item here */)`. This allows you to easily bind a dataset to a graphical representation and use its attributes to inform th…
This is very fair: I went for a metaphorical explanation, rather than a literal one. (For instance, I'd actually have had to write down the code for an SVG, and I was quickly writing this on my lunch break). The `.selectAll().data().join()` data binding method (or `.enter()` on older versions) is very intuitive once you understand it , but for the layman coming in, it's inaccessible AF. I fudged a little in my explan…
For sure, data joining (and enter/exit) is arguably the learning curve wrt D3. TBH since I've started using FE frameworks which handle the DOM, d3-selection (and having to think about data binding) has almost completely fallen off my radar. Now it's mostly using functions from d3-scale, d3-geo, d3-shape, etc then mapping over that output to manually render DOM nodes.
Re: Why is D3 so Verbose?
#30Man, my first startup in 2010 used protovis, the charting library Mike Bostock built before deciding d3 was the better approach. It was rough to have an 8 month old startup with a core piece of tech that suddenly stopped improving.
My main takeaway from so much of this is that "just a chart" is one of the biggest sources of hidden complexity in displaying useful information to people. It's right up there with "a simple web form" and "a web page with some simple interactivity."
Everybody has a wildly different idea of what good looks like. Defaults will never be right. Personal and global taste changes annually. We clown react (rightly) for constantly reinventing the same 4 wheels, but customers gleefully use new stuff all the time.
It's kind of amazing that d3 has been so durable in the frontend world. It really is a wrapper over a pretty solid approach. And yeah, that approach is complex, but that's the reality of visualization. It's hard to imagine another one that's that good.