After reading through the user guide [1], I found that it does have decent (although not super clean) object model and the all SO-suggesting cryptic APIs are Hu

After reading through the user guide [1], I found that it does have decent (although not super clean) object model and the all SO-suggesting cryptic APIs are Huffman-encoded shorthand. With the right mental model, Matplotlib became much less intimidating than what it originally was. So, I'd suggest you RTFM if you found it funky. I'm mostly using Altair instead these days since my data is mostly tabular, but Matplotlib still maintains a position in my toolbox and helps me when I need some dirty (or creative) visualization that is tricky with Altair. And to be honest, I occasionally miss Matplotlib's dense API when I'm fed up with the verbosity Altair has. Yes Altair code is more readable, I agree with the proposition, but being quick and dirty can be lovely sometimes. - [1] https://matplotlib.org/stable/users/index.html https://matplotlib.org/stable/users/index.html - [2] https://altair-viz.github.io/ https://altair-viz.github.io/