5 ms·

Bait and switch is not acceptable. If they want to make money from D3, they should charge for D3. What they're doing is disingenuous and has strong similarities

Bait and switch is not acceptable. If they want to make money from D3, they should charge for D3. What they're doing is disingenuous and has strong similarities to the drug trade. I don't expect people to work for me for free but I do expect people to not tell me they're going to do something for me for free and then try to find a way to charge me for it later. If they want to make a living from D3, they should be upfront about it and charge accordingly.

lamontcg 5y ago
> has strong similarities to the drug trade. well that's a bit over the top.
- webmaven 5y ago
  > > has strong similarities to the drug trade. > well that's a bit over the top. “There are only two industries that call their customers ‘users’: illegal drugs and software.” — Edward Tufte
  - lamontcg 5y ago
    "Sadly many computer users become computer dealers in order to support their habit." -- someone's .signature on Usenet around 1992
ampdepolymerase 5y ago
Creating tutorials is not bait and switch. Any competent web dev can learn from the documentation instead. The Observable tutorials are no different from e.g. Heroku tutorials on Rails, or the usual web tech blog spam Logrocket churns out.
thelastbender12 5y ago
This remark is really unkind. D3 precedes Observable, and the development path is exactly what someone would take if they wanted to make data visualization accessible - create a base library, and later opinionated tools to work with it. The harshest way to interpret unavailability of regular JS tutorials should be that the primary authors don't have enough bandwidth or the inclination to work on it, and the community hasn't picked up the slack to make it more accessible to beginners. The authors deserve nothing other than gratitude.
- hesarenu 5y ago
  Maybe they should not redirect users to observable when clicking on d3js examples.
  - jwilber 5y ago
    Why? It’s free software and a free OSS library. Be thankful examples even exist at all.
    - jiofih 5y ago
      That’s not really the spirit of open source. Sharing, not charity. This is about taking something that already existed and repurposing it for a commercial venture.
      - jwilber 5y ago
        I’ve done a lot of open source and don’t get where you’re going. What was repurposed exactly? Blocks? A deprecated service that nobody volunteered to take over, despite messages asking for that? Something else? Was it free before? Is it still free?
        jiofih 5y ago
        I was answering to “you should be happy you’re getting anything at all”. That’s not a healthy perspective for anyone.
        jwilber 5y ago
        Okay. You misquoted me but that’s alright. If you’ll address the actual point: What was repurposed? Was it free before? Is it free now?
    - hesarenu 5y ago
      What does free have to redirect to another project. At minimum it should redirect to github examples page.

lamontcg 5y ago

> has strong similarities to the drug trade. well that's a bit over the top.

webmaven 5y ago
> > has strong similarities to the drug trade. > well that's a bit over the top. “There are only two industries that call their customers ‘users’: illegal drugs and software.” — Edward Tufte
- lamontcg 5y ago
  "Sadly many computer users become computer dealers in order to support their habit." -- someone's .signature on Usenet around 1992

ampdepolymerase 5y ago

Creating tutorials is not bait and switch. Any competent web dev can learn from the documentation instead. The Observable tutorials are no different from e.g. Heroku tutorials on Rails, or the usual web tech blog spam Logrocket churns out.

thelastbender12 5y ago

This remark is really unkind. D3 precedes Observable, and the development path is exactly what someone would take if they wanted to make data visualization accessible - create a base library, and later opinionated tools to work with it. The harshest way to interpret unavailability of regular JS tutorials should be that the primary authors don't have enough bandwidth or the inclination to work on it, and the community hasn't picked up the slack to make it more accessible to beginners. The authors deserve nothing other than gratitude.

hesarenu 5y ago
Maybe they should not redirect users to observable when clicking on d3js examples.
- jwilber 5y ago
  Why? It’s free software and a free OSS library. Be thankful examples even exist at all.
  - jiofih 5y ago
    That’s not really the spirit of open source. Sharing, not charity. This is about taking something that already existed and repurposing it for a commercial venture.
    - jwilber 5y ago
      I’ve done a lot of open source and don’t get where you’re going. What was repurposed exactly? Blocks? A deprecated service that nobody volunteered to take over, despite messages asking for that? Something else? Was it free before? Is it still free?
      - jiofih 5y ago
        I was answering to “you should be happy you’re getting anything at all”. That’s not a healthy perspective for anyone.
        jwilber 5y ago
        Okay. You misquoted me but that’s alright. If you’ll address the actual point: What was repurposed? Was it free before? Is it free now?
  - hesarenu 5y ago
    What does free have to redirect to another project. At minimum it should redirect to github examples page.