# I want to learn D3. I don\`t want to learn Observable. Is that ok?

**URL:** <https://talk.observablehq.com/t/i-want-to-learn-d3-i-don-t-want-to-learn-observable-is-that-ok/1957>\
**Category:** Help\
**Created:** [May 7, 2019, 1:21pm UTC](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/i-want-to-learn-d3-i-don-t-want-to-learn-observable-is-that-ok/1957 "2019-05-07T13:21:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 7

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![bgchen](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/talk.observablehq.com/bgchen/32/784_2.png) [@bgchen](https://talk.observablehq.com/u/bgchen)\
**Post date:** [June 13, 2019, 4:30pm UTC](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/i-want-to-learn-d3-i-don-t-want-to-learn-observable-is-that-ok/1957/7 "2019-06-13T16:30:24Z")

</div>

> [@Fil](#):
>
> Maybe a tool, or a tutorial, could help with the necessary changes — things like replacing require by `<script>` , using async/await explicitely, etc.

This sounds like a cool idea! A tool would be awesome, but I’m not sure how it could be done. On the tutorial side, maybe something like the “inverse” of this notebook:

> **[Learning from D3 in Action - in Observable](https://observablehq.com/@tmcw/learning-from-d3-in-action-in-observable)**
>
> So you’ve picked up Elijah Meeks’s D3 in Action, 2nd Edition and want to learn D3. Observable’s a great place to learn, but is a bit different than a usual webpage: instead of a single script, you write a notebook, which has reactive cells. This...

[These](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/notebook-to-vanilla-javascript-steps/1644/6) [two](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/how-do-i-work-with-the-d3-sankey-example/1696/3) forum posts of mine come to mind – maybe they’d be useful as case studies.

I also just found this notebook, which goes through the code of a D3 bar chart in 3 different styles (as a single Observable cell, as multiple Observable cells, and as it would be embedded in a standalone HTML page):

> **[Observable vs Regular Flavor Javascript](https://observablehq.com/@cesandoval/observable-vs-regular-flavor-javascript)**
>
> Javascript in Observable Observable cells come in two forms: expressions and blocks. Expressions Expressions are intended for simple definitions, such as basic calculations, and for defining fundamental objects that will be used throughout a...

(I don’t like the “Chart as a set of expressions” version there though since it doesn’t really play well with Observable’s reactivity.)

---

_[View the full topic](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/i-want-to-learn-d3-i-don-t-want-to-learn-observable-is-that-ok/1957)._