Instead of "we should make this more approachable without buying into Observable" it's "we should spend effort on helping you learn Observable and explaining why you need it".
But instead of links in a forum somewhere to someone else's Observable explaining how to turn Observable's into plain JS code, this info should be front and center on the first page of official docs.
This seems to me like a problem the community can readily solve without demanding that the head of Observable solve it for them. Make a nice neutrally-positioned (i.e. not openly hostile to Observable) site that manages plain JS examples and perhaps you can even get Observable to link to it!
Instead of "we should make this more approachable without buying into Observable" it's "we should spend effort on helping you learn Observable and explaining why you need it".
@sanjalot's final comment is somewhat better https://talk.observablehq.com/t/i-want-to-learn-d3-i-don-t-w...
But instead of links in a forum somewhere to someone else's Observable explaining how to turn Observable's into plain JS code, this info should be front and center on the first page of official docs.