Why don't they have more examples for d3js?

[Shyamal Chandra]

This doesn't make any sense. I waste hours to make one major change.

Someone needs to hire a technical writer for d3js.  The documentation and source code itself are insufficient.

Shyamal Chandra

[Marc Fawzi]

It's quite the opposite. D3 has the most examples of any data visualization library out there. Also, pretty much everything is documented.

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[Shyamal Chandra]

Hi Marc, 

Can you buttress your statements with facts (lines of "clear" documentation or survey of the developers) instead of opinion-based statements based biased experience?  

I don't have time to reverse-engineer the source code on github and figure out everything about d3js; I just want to get my job done and not waste time.  

 could spend the same time writing vanilla Javascript with CSS, HTML, and SVG and achieve more.  Why should I believe your statement?  Or is D3js created, without plentiful comments over each line of code, in order make to protect the job security of stealth developers that don't want to "really" share their secret code.  I have seen cases of this in the game development community in terms of different engines before; they call it a black art and keep their implementation a secret to ensure job security.

Where are the design documentations and API references, and comments above each line of code, similar to the Java API or JQuery API (http://api.jquery.com/)?

Mike Bostick's framework creates more of a headache than help the community get the job done.

If you don't agree with me, that's fine.

If you agree, please reply with your complaints.

If no one cares, I am going to switch to SVG, HTML, and CSS with vanilla javascript for the browser.

Shyamal

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[Shyamal Chandra]

Hi Marc, 

Can you buttress your statements with facts (lines of "clear" documentation or survey of the developers) instead of opinion-based statements based on biased experience?  

I don't have time to reverse-engineer the source code on github and figure out everything about d3js; I just want to get my job done and not waste time.  

I could spend the same time writing vanilla Javascript with CSS, HTML, and SVG and achieve more (higher productivity).  Why should I believe your statement?  Or is D3js created, without plentiful comments over each line of code, in order make to protect the job security of stealth developers that don't want to "really" share their secret code.  I have seen cases of this in the game development community in terms of different engines before; they call it a black art and keep their implementation a secret to ensure job security and open source is seen as a marketing tool for large corporations to get fame and jobs (along with keynote speaking jobs).

Where are the design documentations and API references, and comments above each line of code, similar to the Java API or JQuery API (http://api.jquery.com/)?

Mike's framework creates more of a headache than help the community get the job done quickly and systematically.

If you don't agree with me, that's fine.

If you agree, please reply with your complaints.

If no one cares, I am going to switch to SVG, HTML, and CSS with vanilla javascript for the browser.

Shyamal

[Philip]

Documentation and examples for D3 are truly amazing -- together they comprise a work of art.  It's too bad you don't appreciate them.

Novices to JavaScript, HTML5 and data viz will encounter a steep learning curve with D3.  More and more people are creating materials for folks that are new to those things. But D3 and its API reference docs would quickly bloat if modified for that audience.

PB

[Shyamal Chandra]

Hi Phillip,

I am not a novice in JavaScript, HTML5, and data viz and documentation doesn't bloat; it just allows for job security for the "snooty" developers.  I completely disagree with you and this is the nonsense I have to deal with in the open source community.  

Once again, vapor-ware opinion-based, non-factual bias that has not credence or value in my perspective.

If you, Philip, are an advanced and master of JavaScript, HTML4, and data viz.  If you are so famous, then why don't you have any listings when I google your email address.  Why don't you share your github and commits to d3js?  Or are you a stealth developer that doesn't document code and just says the documentation is sufficient without any numbers?

Shyamal

--

[Joe Keohan]

Shyamal,

I agree with Mike that there is plenty of documentation\examples out there.   That being said...This forum is to discuss projects and request help...so perhaps instead of having spent hours trying to make one change, next time post your question and I'm sure someone will provide an assist.  And in the meantime feel free to contribute to the documentation and help improve the community...

Joe

On Thursday, April 21, 2016 at 8:23:28 AM UTC-4, Shyamal Chandra wrote:

[Shyamal Chandra]

Hi Joe,

Where's your Github and commits to d3js?  What's your portfolio?

I will contribute documentation and help improve the community.

Shyamal

--

[Nick Malawskey]

So I'm not a web developer by any stretch of the imagination. I'm self taught actually, and I found the d3 documentation, examples and walk throughs to be exemplary. Especially compared to other libraries (mapbox.js, I'm looking at you).

Stackoverflow is also an excellent resource for D3. There's probably a 100% chance someone there has run into the same problem you have and has a solution.

Google is your friend, my friend.

Mike Bostock and Scott Murray both have excellent introductions to d3 available (for free at that!). 

Not to be a jerk, but I can only assume that you sir, are trolling.

[Shyamal Chandra]

Hi Nick,

Where's your GitHub for your D3 projects and what is your portfolio?

I am not a troll.

Google is not my friend.

Shyamal

--

[Mike Bostock]

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

[Shyamal Chandra]

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

--

[Tito]

Mike

I want to personally thank you and countless others that volunteered precious hours to give us D3. I love D3!

[Shyamal Chandra]

Hi Tito,

Thank Mike and the D3 community by volunteering unpaid hours in documentation.  

Talk is cheap, work is tedious, tractable innovation requires cognition.

Shyamal

--

[Drew Winget]

Just coming to this. Thank you for being the first to post links Mike.

Shyamal, what else would you like? There are tens of thousands of examples linked directly from the first page of the documentation. Mike created a new type of site specifically for sharing d3 examples quickly and easily. Perhaps you should watch his talk on examples and why they're important, or read his long-form, very well-written blog post about examples. The first paragraph of the gallery page (as in "examples gallery") links two live-feedback environments specifically for d3 examples. There is also Tributary.io.

What I'm reading into your statements is a general frustration with the difficulty of learning d3, which is understandable. D3 is not hard at first because of javascript, it is hard because it is a genuinely unique, highly abstract, and powerful domain-specific-language for interactive graphics. It combines concepts from pure functional programming with concepts from visual art. It is an implementation (though with many improvements) of the language described in the book The Grammar of Graphics, by Leland Wilkinson.

Mike's tutorials are short and easy to follow. If you need more, you need to first fully work through those tutorials. If you need a more extended exposition, read Interactive Data Visualisation for the Web (also free), followed by D3 in Action.

Finally, I have found the d3 community to be one of the most kind and helpful open source community that exists. Many of its members remember what it was like to be starting out and are very generous in helping people get over the initial bump. I'm sure that any specific question you would like answered, we would help with. Please let us know what your difficulties are, if they are genuine.

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[Shyamal Chandra]

Hi Drew and the rest of the D3 community,

First of all, thanks for your feedback!

I would like the following and would like to contribute (with support via donations -- because I am not a coding priest) to create an IDE specifically for D3 that has IntelliSense like XCode or VS2015 with hyperlinks to the declaration (similar to Doxygen).  I have already started a GitHub for this on my repository called GNUcode in ANSI C for the Mac OSX operating system solely [https://github.com/shyamalschandra/gnucode] and hope to achieve ASAP but I need your help and the help of the D3 community!

Please contact me if you would like to help me and I can divvy up work for you especially in terms of design documents, api docs, coding documentation, UML documents, abstract hierarchical development, suite of testing code, and reusable and modularity and extensible code that has a long shelf-life.  I myself am not a stealth developer or a coding priest, I am a seasoned, multi-lingual fluent developer.

Thanks!

Shyamal

[Nigel Legg]

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

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[Ian Johnson]

Shyamal,

For someone who likes to say talk is cheap you've sure done a lot of it.

Anyway, welcome to the d3 community, you'll find it a very engaging and thoughtful place with many helpful people. You haven't made the best first impression but we all know how frustrating it can be to get stuck on a bug, so I'm going to assume you lashed out in the heat of the moment.

In addition to the already mentioned links there is a REPL like environment:
http://blockbuilder.org

and you can search over
12,000 examples at
http://blockbuilder.org/search

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. If you don't want to be a part of it you are welcome to leave. If you keep trolling you wont be welcome to stay.

[Drew Winget]

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?

[Richa Vyas]

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

[Curran]

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

[Kennedy Elliott]

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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

[Shyamal Chandra]

The D3js has the following license...

Copyright (c) 2010-2016, Michael Bostock

All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without

modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

* Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this

  list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

* Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice,

  this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation

  and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

* The name Michael Bostock may not be used to endorse or promote products

  derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS"

AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE

IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL MICHAEL BOSTOCK BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT,

INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING,

BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING

NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE,

EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

Where does it say GPLv3 or BSD or MIT license?  This is not free software as coined by Richard Stallman.

My responses to your statements below:

On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 10:37 AM, Nigel Legg <nigel...@gmail.com> wrote:

you are using it for free. 

I have an opportunity cost of emailing people, posting on github (deleted issues), posting on this google groups, and posting on StackOverflow where I lose cycles (many hours) and I have go through the source code and reverse-engineer the design of the framework.

 

there is no charge to you. 

I have pay for a heavy price of waiting for an asynchronous reply to each inquiry a nondeterministic amount of time.

 

That is because every one who works on it has done so for free, without charge. 

Oh, really?  You don't have a job where you do D3js and get paid.  How many commits have you done to D3js in your lifetime?

 

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.

"Only" person.  Where did you get the following statement?  What facts do you have to buttress your opinonated statements?  There are 19,462 questions tagged asking for help in D3.js.

Why should I document?  I would rather use vanilla Javascript with SVG, HTML5, and CSS.

Shyaaml

[Shyamal Chandra]

Hi Ian,

On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 10:43 AM, Ian Johnson <enj...@gmail.com> wrote:

Shyamal,

For someone who likes to say talk is cheap you've sure done a lot of it.

That is your opinion, not fact.  Where's your github?  Where's your portfolio for D3js?

Anyway, welcome to the d3 community, you'll find it a very engaging and thoughtful place with many helpful people. You haven't made the best first impression but we all know how frustrating it can be to get stuck on a bug, so I'm going to assume you lashed out in the heat of the moment.

Do you have an IM where I can reach you if you have free time?

In addition to the already mentioned links there is a REPL like environment:
http://blockbuilder.org

and you can search over
12,000 examples at
http://blockbuilder.org/search

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. If you don't want to be a part of it you are welcome to leave. If you keep trolling you wont be welcome to stay.

That's great!  I really appriciate the hospitality in this open discussion about D3js.

Sincerely,

Shyamal Chandra

shya...@gmail.com

[Shyamal Chandra]

Hi Drew,

On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 10:43 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.

I understand but there is no Xcode-like functionality for Javascript and D3js-like web frameworks.

 

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?

I don't understand your question about $1B.  Can you extrapolate?

Sincerely,

Shyamal Chandra

shya...@gmail.com

[Gordon Woodhull]

Thanks for posting this, Kennedy. I definitely feel the strain just contributing to a couple of minimally successful open source projects.

Folks, I think we should stop feeding the troll.

[Marc Fawzi]

<<

That is your opinion, not fact.  Where's your github?  Where's your portfolio for D3js?

>>

At this point, I have to ask, are you a bot? Your responses seem like that of an automated troll, as this same exact sentence is your reply to every reply.

(if you were, I'm sure you're programmed to exterminate exterminate exterminate)

I've seen 'debate bots' in action and your pattern of interaction is actually not far off, so I am wondering legitimately if you are indeed a bot.

You're barking up the wrong tree, bot!

[Shyamal Chandra]

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

[Lars Kotthoff]

> There are *19,462* questions tagged asking for help in D3.js.

You complain about people making statements without supporting facts -- what
claim of yours does the number of questions support? That the documentation is
lacking? There are 728,325 questions on JQuery and 1,056,930 on Java, both of
which you mention as having much better documentation. Many of the questions on
D3 have been answered by linking to the existing documentation or examples.

> I would rather use vanilla Javascript with SVG, HTML5, and CSS.

Please do. You're not hurting anybody's feelings if you stop using D3 forever.

Lars

[Shyamal Chandra]

Hi Curran,

On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 12:05 PM, Curran <curran....@gmail.com> 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.

I will do that and provide a doc with the specific things that can be ironed out.

The D3 documentation is the gold standard of library documentation in my mind.

Gold standard, eh?  Do you have numbers to back up that claim?

 

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.

God bless you for aspiring to such things.

 

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".

I cannot promise that I will not use such ad hominems in my personal opinion.

Thanks,

Shyamal Chandra

shya...@gmail.com

Best regards,

Curran

[Marc Fawzi]

This is standard chat bot behavior at this point. 

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[Luca Bonavita]

Shyamal,

please go on, "use vanilla Javascript with SVG, HTML5, and CSS" and do some kind of viz of your choice.

Then come back here and show what you got.

Cheers,

Luca

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[Shyamal Chandra]

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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