D only donates the kidney if B agrees to donate his though, right? Because otherwise it's really simple and C is left screwed.

It's sort of the precursor to d3; it's not maintained any more. Protovis was very tied to drawing charts, it had backends that would draw things on canvas or SVG, and the library contained things like "line." d3 is much more general: all it does is tie your document structure to data. What that document is, whether it's an SVG drawing so you can draw something, or a list of divs, or whatever, is up to you.

I've interviewed, hired, and mentored a lot of developers. The biggest difference between the really good ones and the not-so-good ones is knowledge of CS theory: algorithms, data structures, how things like databases and operating systems work.

If you have a good knowledge of that kind of thing, then most of the time when you have a problem you'll be able to say "oh, this reminds me of..." and have at least most of a solution. That's what makes a good programmer.

It's been long enough since I learned it that I don't remember what I used. I learned Protovis first, the library that team made before d3, then adapted my code to d3 when it came out. Not that I recommend doing it that way. :)

I've used it a lot, what would you like to know?