Comment by jwilber

Love all D3 content, but I'd add that the data binding just to create svg is not the real reason - after all, you can do this declaratively using most modern frameworks by directly iterating over the data and returning a positioned element (fwiw this is how I prefer to use it today). The reason is because of the complexity within d3 selection, namely the enter/update/exit + transition capabilities: https://www.d3indepth.com/enterexit/

Another thing worth mentioning that newcomers seem to take for granted - the margin boilerplate required for correct positioning (see https://observablehq.com/@d3/margin-convention).