Re: Why don't they have more examples for d3js?

[Johnson Chetty]

Dear Shyamal, 

Let me address a few issues here: 

"I want to learn all of D3js but the documentation is not up to my standards."

1. YOU want to learn all of D3. Please be considerate with your words. 

    Even the most simplest of questions on this board receive help and guidance. Many can attest to that. 

    Since you have extensive experience, you would know that Javascript has changed over the years and it has adopted various paradigms. 

    Indeed, if you find that this method of coding is difficult to grasp by reading examples, you are more than welcome to seek a tutor.       But please do not denigrate people who are trying to understand your stance and reply courteously to you. 

2. "I am just addressing this issue because I posted the following issue on github and it was immediately closed and addressed by Mike B. in a strange and interesting way [ https://github.com/mbostock/d3/issues/2805 ]."

No. Let me clarify, you are not simply addressing the issue. You are talking down everyone here. In spite of this, you have been given numerous links and examples and reproofs. 

You received a response in the same day of posting! Within 24 hours by Mike! There is a reason why there are well over 12,000 examples of D3. Have you heard of  'Learning by doing'? That's what the examples are there for. 

"One of the things that makes this community so fun to be a part of is the attitudes of the people involved, this thread is evidence of their generosity in the face of blatant trolling."

In all sincerity: This made me laugh hysterically:   " Mike B., didn't put ample comments in the source code." 

That's my tweet for the day!

On 21 April 2016 at 23:48, Shyamal Chandra <shya...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Kennedy,

On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 12:34 PM, Kennedy Elliott <kenn.e...@gmail.com> wrote:

taken from sustainable open source. we thank you mike for all you do for us! we'd all be happy to help you shyamal, just us a chance.

The biggest danger I see to open source innovation is entitled users. Open source is fun; I love it. I share ideas with the world and people engage with them. I invest effort and people benefit from that. It’s exponential value creation. That’s what drives me. And I don’t think I’m unique.

 

The MFC (most frequency committers) should take responsbility by not boomeranging the issue by the inqurier. 

 

But some — and even just a few — bad actors can easily ruin it. Open Source authors don’t work for you. They owe you nothing, yet give you so much.

I want to learn all of D3js but the documentation is not up to my standards.  I am just addressing this issue because I posted the following issue on github and it was immediately closed and addressed by Mike B. in a strange and interesting way [ https://github.com/mbostock/d3/issues/2805 ].

 

 

If you show up in a repo rudely demanding something, if you trash-talk a project, or worst of all if you personally attack someone — for whatever reason — you’ve just cost the world something of value. Maybe it’s 5 minutes that could have been spent fixing an issue. Or maybe it’s much more.

Excuse me. I didn't "rudely demand", "trash-talk", and "personally attack" AFAIK.  

 

 

We all need to defend against this culture of entitlement. Protect our vibrant community, which is sourced all over the world. Thank people. Let them know their work is valued. Make an effort to contribute and help.

Mike B. has a consultation firm, had a job at the NYTimes, and got a publication while at Stanford University so this is not work for the goodwill of the community.

 

 

If everybody engaged with a mentality to add more value than they receive from a project, we would see much less stress and burnout among authors.

I don't following.  Please extrapolate.

 

 

On a larger scale, there’s another discussion to be had about how to make major projects that start personal but become commercially valuable en masse sustainable. But until we crack that, and even after, every single person counts.

If every single person counts, then why did Mike B. close my issue on Github and say "Enough is enough" and not delegate it to someone else.

 

Every interaction either adds to, or subtracts from, the value of the ecosystem as a whole.

If every single person counts and "...every interaction..." adds to the "...ecosystem as a whole...", then why did Mike B. ignore my request and consult the most active committers on D3js and Javascript as a whole.

Thanks!

Shyamal Chandra

shya...@gmail.com

 

On Thursday, April 21, 2016 at 1:05:44 PM UTC-4, Curran wrote:

Hello Shyamal,

I'm curious, which function(s) in did you find inadequately documented such that you had to dive into the source? If we can pinpoint the source of frustration, perhaps the docs for that specific thing can be ironed out.

The D3 documentation is the gold standard of library documentation in my mind. I aspire to write documentation that is so clear, with such a consistent format, with clear indications of which arguments are optional (using brackets), with each item linkable, with explanations of the behavior under various conditions, with explanations of all return values, and with a well organized index page. I and many others have huge respect for this work.

Also, I'd like to mention, there is a great tool http://bl.ocksplorer.org/ that lets you search D3 examples based on which API calls are used. Let's say, for example, usage of linear scales was not clear from the documentation, you could search for examples that use linear scales. Bl.ocksplorer has auto-complete as well (image attached), which gets at some of the ideas you had about IDE development.

Lastly, I'd like to voice my personal opinion that this list is no place for ad hominem insults like "stealth developers", "snooty developers", and "coding priest".

Best regards,

Curran

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Regards,
Johnson Chetty

Twitter: @johnsonc 

[Ian Johnson]

Shyamal,

Your sense of entitlement is staggering. You have already wasted the time of many productive members in the community with your selfish requests, all of which could have been answered with a few simple google queries.

The only thing you have a right to at this point is a banning.

If anyone feels this is unjustified I'm happy to discuss it personally enj...@gmail.com, otherwise this person is a drain on our community and the energy we could be spending building sweet visualizations. Shyamal, if you can demonstrate some humility and respect to the same degree the community has shown you I will consider lifting the ban.

Everyone else, I'm sorry this took so long, I was away from my computer :)

On Apr 21, 2016 11:00 AM, "Shyamal Chandra" <shya...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 11:27 AM, Richa Vyas <richa...@gmail.com> wrote:

Shyamal,

I am a silent observer of this group but today I have to write this. D3 is one data viz solution which is truly meant for developers. I haven't seen these many coding examples for any data viz solution before. Forget about people like us who dedicatedly spend their time on data viz, even novice can go on https://github.com/mbostock/d3/wiki/Gallery and find their solution for whatsoever data set they have. 

We are a community and we help each other without complaining.

I am not complaining.  If you release something for the public to use, you should take responsibility to provide ample and clear documentation about each API function in the D3js framework.

 

I have not seen a thread like this before. If you choose to be part of this community, then stop complaining.

Oh, excuse me.  Get with the reality of putting your code on github.  Don't tell me to stop complaining.  I have the right to do so.

 

Given that you are such a big fan of documentation, why don't you spend your effort on documenting it rather than initiating this rude thread.

The is an opportunity cost of many days lost with that because he, Mike B., didn't put ample comments in the source code.

Sincerely,

Shyamal Chandra

shya...@gmail.com

 

On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 8:43 AM, Drew Winget <scipioaf...@gmail.com> wrote:

Shyamal, 

I use vim (spacemacs), and don't really want a different editor unless it does something genuinely new. You might find Bret Victor's talk "Media for Thinking the Unthinkable" interesting. See Demo 6 for the relevant UI. I want to draw a picture and then have it magically work with my data. It is possible, the UI has been designed, why hasn't someone made $1B releasing it?

On 21 April 2016 at 08:37, Nigel Legg <nigel...@gmail.com> wrote:

you are using it for free.  there is no charge to you.  That is because every one who works on it has done so for free, without charge.  that is what open source means: it means free software that gets you a bit closer to where you want to go, but you have to accept that there may be issues with the software and with it's documentation  at the moment you seem to be the only person complaining about the documentation for D3, so why don't you document it.

Cheers, Nigel

mobile 07758 665575

skype: nigellegg

On 21 April 2016 at 15:54, Shyamal Chandra <shya...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Mike,

It is productive.  I have to disagree with you. 

Someone should stand up against this "volunteer effort" that is full of stealth developers that use an "open-source", terribly documented (in my opinion -- I don't have an analytical way to buttressing this effort  -- right now) vis a vi Adobe thorough documentation for its proprietary software, e.g. Flex.  

Frankly, the unpaid hours you spent developing the D3 landed you a publication at Stanford, freelance consultations, and a paid position at NYTimes.  You will eventually get speaking engagements and other paid positions for the D3 developers.  Open source is a marketing tool by nobody developers and large corporations to spike their stock price to get celebrity status among the nerd community.

I don't agree with the format of the documentation; you have to scroll down so much and the navigation is not short and punchy.  

If you have a private Slack channel for D3js or a phone conference call every week with the major D3 developer and committer so I can raise this flag on the documentation, that would be great.

Otherwise, I will stop using D3 and move on to vanilla javascript, SVG, HTML, and CSS.

I hope as one of the founders of D3js, you would not like that to happen.  I am not a newbie Javascript coder; I have been coding Javascript since grade school (roughly 21 years of off-and-on experience).  That is the fact; not some random person's assessment of my knowledge from a black box email.  

Why don't you create a Playgrounds like Swift with instantaneous feedback or REPL like Python?  I know there is console for the browser but that is created by the browser creators, not D3js community.

Thank you.

Shyamal

On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 9:32 AM, Mike Bostock <mbos...@gmail.com> wrote:

Shyamal,

Replying to each person trying to help you by questioning their expertise is not productive.

The API Reference is here for 3.x and 4.0, respectively:

https://github.com/mbostock/d3/wiki/API-Reference

https://github.com/mbostock/d3/blob/4/README.md

If you’re looking for tutorials, there are quite a few here:

https://github.com/mbostock/d3/wiki/Tutorials

The closest to a design document is probably the D3 paper published in IEEE InfoVis:

http://vis.stanford.edu/papers/d3

And How Selections Work:

https://bost.ocks.org/mike/selection/

Lastly, a reminder that D3 is a free, open-source project maintained entirely by volunteer effort. I have personally spent thousands of unpaid hours developing D3, writing examples and documentation, answering questions and teaching. If you wish to hire a technical writer to improve D3’s documentation, please do!

Mike

[Andy Thornton]

I vote for devoting the rest of the thread to talking about all the awesome things D3 and the community has brought your way. I owe, in no small part, a career change to the amazing work, examples, and help available to me because of the generosity of Mike, Jason, and the entire community. Seeing the examples not only inspired me to pursue a career I am truly passionate about, it enabled me to actually learn the skills necessary to do so. In addition to shaping my career, D3 has also helped my community. I have developed visualizations for local non-profits to help get their message across and create positive change in my city. 

None of this would have been possible without everything Mike and the community has provided. So to Mike, and everyone in the community, thank you very much! 

Cheers,

Andy

[Jim McCusker]

D3 is a cornerstone of modern data science, and I'm honored to be considered part of this community, which has been incredibly welcoming and humble considering the amazing impact D3 has had in the past 5 years. It is a joy to use, and remains the only reason I have to know how to program Javascript. At this point I've implemented at least 2 dozen visual strategies over the years, some of which have made it into my dissertation, into figures for two Nature Genetics articles, into at least 4 commercial applications. The documentation has never been a problem, and I refer to it daily to understand its nuances. 

Thanks to everyone here,

Jim

James P. McCusker III, Ph.D.

http://tw.rpi.edu/web/JamesMcCusker

[Marc Fawzi]

Thru D3 I learned that obsession with clear abstractions and adherence to certain elevated programming principles is, as a thing, not more important than blowing people's minds with shear creativity and talent :) and Mike has done an amazing job blowing our minds. His technique transcends philosophy and gets to the core of the matter: delighting the user.

That helped me balance my philosopher and artists sides. 

D3 is a magical experiment in mass production of creativity, led by examples from Mike and others who are truly talented. 

Sent from my iPhone

[Kendall Green]

Thank you, d3 community!

Regarding d3 documentation, I have a question about recent books; are there any new version material published in print or ebook that is recommended?

I've been enthusiastic about data driven documents since the begining, when switched from graphviz. It is exciting to see progression of the project, plus increasing exposure that greatly enhances data analytic products,  including Splunk.

I'm very impressed with progress of the community and all of the individual contributions. Although I don't have any public portfolio or github contributions, I am a lifelong artist and IT professional that appreciates this project and the community support. I often read the mailing list for insight to how others implimented there use cases, related issues, and how to resolve problems with the abundance of nifty solutions.

Today's trolling was irritating to read, and would have much rather spent the time reading more of the book, Mastering d3 by Pablo Castillo, or any other plentiful documentation online ...

However, the links posted by the community-based responses are a good consolidation of reference documentation and examples, that are contradictory to the frivolous claims that the project lacking. So there is value to this thread, regardless of ignorant aspersions reiterated by Shyamal's attempt to gain sponsors for an unnecessary IDE (which I think a pycharm plugin or mps domain specific language mapping to d3 api would be cool. Although I'm not attempting to create such a thing, but thought of D3 when stumbling upon jetbeans / campagnelabs Meta-R IDE.)

The d3 open source project has gained industry recognition for use within enterprise applications, and anyone trying to diminish that with blackballing the contributors only expose themselves for the umbilical which they are fed.

To conclude, I'm impressed with the patience and compassion from the d3 community when faced with such outlandish messages, and it definitely warranted the mailing list ban.

Thank you everyone!

Kendall

[Japhy Bartlett]

The library is fully documented, there are thousands of examples, and an active mailing list that is ready to answer any questions you have.

Nobody gives a fuck that it's not up to your personal standards.

- Japhy

Hi Kennedy,

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[Artur O]

This was one of the weirdest threads ever !

Mike + The Community - thank you for D3 and thank you for keeping the good work! Very excited about the new modular structure of things, but this worth another thread :)