In the future, the right to anonymity is a right that will become worth fighting for.
93 karma · joined September 27, 2016
I'm a software engineer with an interest in merging physical and digital spaces.
Please reach out if you want to connect.
We should read source code sometimes (maybe) to deepen an understanding of how someone might think about the problem differently. In the link, Donald Knuth says he enjoyed the challenge of exploring a piece of software that had no documentation in order to figure it out.
In light of this, my answer to "what code should people read" is that you should read (really, decode) the source code of libraries competing to solve the same problem. This would lead to the greatest yield in terms of uncovering core shared concepts and core unique concepts.
You could compare Vue and React to understand how two different parties thought about componentizing the front-end. Or you could compare Django and Flask to see how a batteries-included MVC framework compares to a lighter alternative.
In the startup space, there is also Mode [2] which has reasonable starting pricing at $25 per user per month.
I've used all three, and my personal favorite is Power BI. They are all great though.
[0] https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/?b=1
I evaluated trial versions of the following tools: Looker, Periscope, Mode, Tableau, QuickSight, and Microsoft PowerBI. They are all very similar in my opinion and at the end of the day will all provide the ability to view dashboards and reports through a web interface. The tangible differences come down to how exactly data refresh happens and the customizability of dashboards and reports. Each tool also offers varying degrees of useful edge features like sharing, alerting, privileges, and saved queries. I eventually settled on Microsoft PowerBI.
The biggest advantage for using PowerBI in my mind is the degree to which reports can be customized. Compared to QuickSight, PowerBI is leagues ahead in terms of customization, while still providing enough predefined templates that you are not constantly thinking about trivial styling choices. More than any other feature, Microsoft gets this right and executes on it better than any other BI tool I've tested. There is even a growing gallery of community visualizations that can be used for free (https://app.powerbi.com/visuals/), and you can write your own visualization templates using TypeScript.
I've been using PowerBI for several months now, and each month Microsoft releases an update that targets the biggest frustrations I've had, such as lack of pre-defined data connections or pre-defined styles. It's still missing some key features I would like (different forms of aggregations, etc) but it's still better than QuickSight, no question. As far as pricing goes PowerBI actually starts with a gratuitous free tier. The free part ends when you want to enable the "groups" feature, which allows you to set up privileges for which users can view certain dashboards. The paid version also allows more data to be stored in the SaaS. You need a premium account which is $10/per user/per month. The pricing + the speed of creating and uploading reports made PowerBI the winning tool. So far the team has been very happy with it.
As others have stated, this offering directly competes with Google's Data Studio which was recently just announced.