Yeah I used cytoscape before but it didn't have the full customization that I wanted. Besides the performance issues, there were some problems I couldn't have solved without a custom renderer - if many lines overlap, how should their colors blend? - how to render circles so that they look nice both zoomed in / out - how to avoid it looking like a hairball graph [1]

The nice thing about a personal project is that I can do whatever I like with no constraints, so I built one that's suited for this project and fits my tastes.

[1] https://cambridge-intelligence.com/how-to-fix-hairballs/