If you wanted to use the Google Chart API, and started searching for interfaces or libraries ~ 6 years ago, there wasn't much out there. I was using CodeIgniter back then, so I decided to create a package for myself, since I wanted charts in my project.
From this need, Codeigniter-gCharts was born. Looking back, it's crazy how much javascript was output through string concatination. The complexity grew, I started learning Laravel, my programing knowledge was expanding...
Through a big overhaul, Lavacharts emerged, with a docs site! My first real project out in the wild. People started taking intrest, people needed charts!
Closing issues, adding features, more work and LavaJs starts taking shape in version 2.0 of Lavacharts with the creation of the JavascriptFactory. Lavacharts reaches version 2.3 and I am learning node, npm, and the js ecosystem. I learn Gulp and by version 2.4, lava.js makes it's first appearance with a Gulp based build chain. It wasn't much, but it was a start.
Version 3.0 was a big deal to the internals of the php module, but it wasn't until version 3.1 before LavaJs finally became a CommonJs Module. That was in 2017. Since then I have learned TypeScript and I thought it would be a great execise to convert the whole lava.js package into a nice, standalone library. It will be included in the next release of Lavacharts, but it is quite handy, all on it's own.