Why Are There So Many Javascript Charting Libraries?

Javascript charting libraries are pretty much an extreme example of below:

Below is a a video of Dan Mané explaining this problem before introducing their new tool, Plottable. I decided to create this tutorial indexing the points in the video for self reference because he makes a lot of great points, and Plottable is one of the few charting libraries that supports Typescript.

• Example/Anecdote of The Problem
  • Wikipedia Page showing differences between 30 different Javascript libraries, and a blog post comparing 50.

• D3

  • Starting To Look at D3 - All based on this one library
  • D3: A Charting Library?
  • D3: A Data Viz Library?
  • D3: A DOM Manipulation Library
  • D3 - Low Level, Incredible things are possible, but simple things are hard.
  • Breakdown of Parts of Chart
  • A look at the code for the parts of the chart
  • The Strength and Weakness of D3
  • Awkward otter "joke"? (skip me)

• Look at other charting libraries

• Chartist's Approach
• The problem with all charting libraries - It's a trap.
• Discussing the presenter's approach to the problem and why they are going to have a whack at it - Plottable
• layout - build from parts and stitch together in a table.
• Create a basic chart quickly and iterate desired changes rapidly.
• Chartographer.js - Plottable in "easy mode" for a super simple/basic form to get you started and lead you onto plottable when you need customization.
• Step through difficulty level - chartogrepher -> plottable -> d3
• Discussing use of plottable.js for creating a custom data visualization for Eve online data
• Github area for Plottable.