SVG has a lot of warts, but it actually has two big things going for it: it's everywhere, and it's DOM-programmable. Anyone who knows js can start animating SVG

SVG has a lot of warts, but it actually has two big things going for it: it's everywhere, and it's DOM-programmable. Anyone who knows js can start animating SVGs the same way they animate the DOM. It is somewhat more primitive, given how z-ordering is source-code dependent, and its weird compound attribute values for things like transforms. It's also true that if you try to code seriously with raw SVG you're just going to redefine a new library like D3 or Three.js or chart.js, but worse.