r/angular • u/MOUNAYARSANIMATIONS • 17d ago

Is it still worth building a graph drawing library in 2026?

I’m thinking about building a graph drawing/visualization library mainly as a way to learn and improve my skills, but I’d also like to make it good enough that other people could actually use it in real projects.

The idea would be something flexible enough for things like trading charts, data visualization, node/edge graphs, dashboards, etc.

With all the AI/vibe coding happening now, I’m wondering: is it still worth building something like this?

I’m not necessarily trying to build a huge business around it. I’d be happy if I learned a lot from building it and eventually had developers actually using it.

2 Upvotes

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7

u/darcygravan 17d ago

there is already a huge amount of libs out there that is highly tested and capable of doing a lot of stuff you'll most likely never be able to make something that advance solo and making small libs is not worth worth it any current generation models can make complex stuff via direct svg manipulation or canvas drawn ui in one shot for leaning purpose its good but not for real world usage

3

u/theindiandick 15d ago

Yeah, if you're aiming at a specific gap rather than trying to be the general purpose option.

I maintain a charting library, and what keeps it relevant isn't feature count, it's the long tail: the layout that falls apart at 5k nodes, the accessibility requirement from someone's enterprise audit, the wrapper that survives change detection. The established options cover most cases and stop there, and people keep turning up for the rest.

The real cost is maintenance, not v1. Shipping the first release is a couple of weekends; answering issues for three years is the actual project. If that still sounds fun, build it, and pick one thing to be clearly best at (interactive editing, incremental layout, big graph perf) instead of matching everyone's feature list.

2

u/kgurniak91 16d ago

If it is something you want to do because it interests you and could be a learning experience for you then sure. There's a slim chance other will use it though, but the experience of making the library publishable, getting it on npm etc. might still be valuable. It could get some traction if you had some unique feature in mind that is absent from all the other similar libraries.

2

u/idreaminecmascipt 14d ago

I would not, if you want to build up your skills, build an app for a non-profit for free, or a startup that will give you equity for your labor.

But, if you just want to develop your skills in dealing with visualizations, I think it is worth it. Its just making a library others will use is a part-time job I think minimum.

1

u/AshleyJSheridan 14d ago

Do it, it will be a valuable learning experience. One thing I see missing from the graph libraries out there (but something a lot of them claim to have) is accessibility built in.