Hacker News: TheHeasman

15 Minutes vs. 14 Hours: The Reality of Custom Data Visualisation

TheHeasman — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 18:06:38 +0000

Article URL: https://theheasman.com/short_stories/15-minutes-vs-14-hours-the-reality-of-custom-data-visualisation/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46605066

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

A Brief History of UK Interest Rates

TheHeasman — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 12:06:23 +0000

Article URL: https://theheasman.com/data-history-of-uk-interest-rates/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46311676

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Luck and Risk

TheHeasman — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 16:48:09 +0000

Article URL: https://theheasman.com/short_stories/luck-and-risk/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45928670

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

AI and Intuition

TheHeasman — Sat, 01 Nov 2025 21:36:32 +0000

Article URL: https://theheasman.com/short_stories/ai-and-educating-intuition/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45785628

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by TheHeasman in "Excessive planning is a fools game"

TheHeasman — Sun, 19 Oct 2025 09:58:29 +0000

Aristotle's golden mean.

Excessive planning is a fools game

TheHeasman — Sat, 18 Oct 2025 22:54:02 +0000

Article URL: https://theheasman.com/short_stories/excessive-planning-is-a-fools-game/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45630935

Points: 4

# Comments: 3

New comment by TheHeasman in "Why is D3 so Verbose?"

TheHeasman — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 22:45:42 +0000

I stand corrected. Thanks for pointing that out. Learned something new.

New comment by TheHeasman in "Why is D3 so Verbose?"

TheHeasman — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 15:27:40 +0000

Ahhhhh. Thanks man. And totally nerding out here because YES. ANIMATIONS. Animations is why I fell in love with wanting to learn D3 in 2019. You can do things as you transition between data steps, that honestly, has been such a pain in the behind to try with anything else. I'm not a web developer. I'm a data guy.

New comment by TheHeasman in "Why is D3 so Verbose?"

TheHeasman — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 15:24:14 +0000

I'll check that out. At the moment I'm just building up a bunch of template code which I'll re-use. But might check out solid.js.

New comment by TheHeasman in "Why is D3 so Verbose?"

TheHeasman — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 15:22:45 +0000

Yaaasss. I think of it as being able to use a pencil to draw charts (and do creative stuff like Florence Nightingale's original polar area graph), instead of having a stencil that can draw things for you. It's a way to visually manipulate the DOM in a way if you're comfortable with data.

You can simply just use Tableau or Power BI and take screenshots otherwise.

New comment by TheHeasman in "Why is D3 so Verbose?"

TheHeasman — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 15:19:45 +0000

Uh, there are arrow operators in JS. D3.JS in Action Third Edition exclusively uses arrow operators.

(Trust me. I don't know jack about JavaScript, I had to get through the MDN docs to understand what they were, and once I did, made a whole lot more sense).

New comment by TheHeasman in "Why is D3 so Verbose?"

TheHeasman — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 15:17:29 +0000

Agreed. I fudged quite a lot in my post to make it accessible to the layman. Triee to explain to a UX designer I know that "D3 is a library for JavaScript that..." And I saw their brain switch off live in front of me.

Semantics matter more than literals sometimes.

*EDIT: Grammar. I was typing on my phone. Soz.

New comment by TheHeasman in "Why is D3 so Verbose?"

TheHeasman — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 15:15:08 +0000

This is very fair: I went for a metaphorical explanation, rather than a literal one. (For instance, I'd actually have had to write down the code for an SVG, and I was quickly writing this on my lunch break).

The `.selectAll().data().join()` data binding method (or `.enter()` on older versions) is very intuitive once you understand it, but for the layman coming in, it's inaccessible AF. I fudged a little in my explanation to make it more accessible. But hey. That's learning.

Why is D3 so Verbose?

TheHeasman — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 10:12:35 +0000

Article URL: https://theheasman.com/short_stories/why-is-d3-code-so-long-and-complicated-or-why-is-it-so-verbose/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44970981

Points: 131

# Comments: 68

New comment by TheHeasman in "Astronomers Discover Rare Distant Object in Sync with Neptune"

TheHeasman — Fri, 18 Jul 2025 07:08:32 +0000

"The survey was designed to search for bodies with orbits that extend far above and below the plane of the Earth's orbit around the sun, part of the outer solar system that hasn’t been well-studied."

Christ. I didn't realise we hadn't looked at stuff not in Earth's plane. That's a tonne of space to explore, right in our own backyard.

New comment by TheHeasman in "Apple bans entire dev account, no reason given"

TheHeasman — Fri, 18 Jul 2025 07:06:02 +0000

The joys of being at a platform's mercy.

New comment by TheHeasman in "Part 1 of 7 – My First Predictive Analytics Project"

TheHeasman — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 16:36:32 +0000

My first predictive analytics project in my Data Journalism career.

Part 1 of 7 – My First Predictive Analytics Project

TheHeasman — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 16:36:32 +0000

Article URL: https://theheasman.com/short_stories/part-1-of-7-my-first-predictive-analytics-project/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44584254

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

I Used a Market Basket Analysis During a Job Interview

TheHeasman — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 14:15:02 +0000

Article URL: https://theheasman.com/how-i-used-a-market-basket-analysis-to-get-a-job-offer/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44396965

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

New comment by TheHeasman in "“Write Drunk, Edit Sober” Is Bad Advice"

TheHeasman — Fri, 07 Dec 2018 16:30:59 +0000

I've read this article before and I got a little annoyed. I've never ever heard "write drunk, edit sober" been advised in a literal context, but a metaphorical context.

Write drunk - shitty first draft where you don't care.

Edit sober - reasonable editing done when you have a fresh pair of eyes.

Why on earth did the author take this advice literally?