Not saying this is an easy problem to solve either. If I needed to generate some very specific data driven graphics it would probably still be my go to.
For me it also always had this moment when it „clicked“ just to disappear after not using it for a couple of months.
Which is an interesting problem!
Is it better to optimally model ones problem space?
Or suboptimally model it, but create a model that's closer to developer/user expectations?
I could not understand some of the design choices until I understood tidy data and not being much into R, I never ran across the idea previously.
Mike Bostock is so brilliant and has put in such an immense amount of work into d3 that if you even start trying to build your own data visualization javascript library you will end up leveraging d3 at some point as to not reinvent the wheel.
Again, I’m not an expert on d3, just someone who spent ~12-18months maintaining couple visualizations (among other things)