Javascript and d3 - leondutoit/data-centric-programming GitHub Wiki

If you're serious about communicating your data-based insights to others then you will have be embrace the browser as one of your main presentation environments. This means that any serious data person will have to master Javascript (and HTML and CSS) to some extent - Codecademy has some great introductory tutorials.

The thing with Javascript is: you can't half-half it. It is possible to get things done without ever properly understanding what you're doing, but the language does not enforce well written and maintainable code. So, in order to produce well written and maintainable code you will have to master it and use it responsibly.

One of the main reasons a data person would want to get into Javascript is for using the d3 visualisation library. And that has been my overall goal - to grasp enough Javascript to become effective in d3. These books about Javascript are both wonderful:

• Javascript: The Good Parts
• Effective Javascript

I recommend reading 'The Good Parts' first. To get into d3 I suggest trying something simple like making a line graph and seeing where you're level is. It might hurt your brain for a while... Anyways, once I understood what I was doing with this simple line graph a whole new world opened up. This is a good tutorial for starting out fresh - there are many others though.

Useful people to follow on Twitter:

• Mike Bostock
• Jason Davies
• Christophe Viau

It is also a good idea to try and create examples of your own and share them on blocks. There is also a wealth of examples to learn from there.