- Throughout my capstone project, I’ve had the chance to work with some great technologies, each offering unique advantages and challenges. When it comes to my favorite technology, that would have to be Plotly Dash. This tool has made my project so much more manageable, especially when it comes to graphing, charts, and tables. It’s powerful yet easy to use, and one of the best parts is how much less code I need to write compared to other methods. Plotly Dash’s integration with Python makes it an ideal choice for visualizing the data we’re working with in the project, and it’s made my workflow a lot smoother.
- The learning curve with callbacks in Dash was a bit tricky at first. It took me a while to understand how they worked, but once I got the hang of it, I really started to appreciate how much cleaner and more efficient the code became. Now, I see the value in them, and I wouldn’t want to go back to a more convoluted way of managing interactivity.
- On the other hand, my least favorite technology has been AWS Lambda and Elastic Beanstalk. While these tools are essential for deployment in our project, I’ve found them pretty challenging to wrap my head around, especially when I had to learn them on my own. The process of hosting a website using AWS was a real struggle. I hadn’t had to deal with deployment at this level before, and I honestly felt a bit lost trying to set everything up. Even though I haven’t used them much yet, I know I’ll be diving into them more as we move forward with the deployment phase.
- Initially, I was building the UI using JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, but I’m so glad I switched to Plotly Dash. The integration is much smoother, and the amount of code I need to write is drastically reduced. Going with Dash has made a huge difference in simplifying the project and making it more manageable.
- If I had the chance to start over, I think I would stick with Plotly Dash for the front end. As for AWS Lambda and Beanstalk, I’d probably look for alternative deployment options that are a bit more straightforward, but I will dive deeper and see if I can get a better understanding. But overall, I’m learning a lot from the challenges, and I’m excited to see how these technologies play out in the final product.
~ Madison Dowell