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I have been working with Looker for a while and one thing that bothers me the most is the multiple limits to its native-visualization (clustered stacked bar chart unavailable, sunburst chart with limited editing options...).

So, I figured that it is time to learn to develop visualization myself. However, I have very little to no experience handling JavaScript and visualization libraries, thus, my learning plan is as follow:

  1. Learn JavaScript Basics (FreeCodeCamp I guess)
  2. Learn D3.js
  3. Adapt D3.js to Looker visualization API

My question is:

  • Is this plan logical ? If not, what is your suggestion ?
  • How long would it take if I put in 2 - 3 hours per day ? Assuming that I have a higher IQ than a monkey
Hung Ho Phan
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    Welcome to Stackoverflow. This question is partly about opinions instead of fact based answers. Please have a look here stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-ask – wasserholz Aug 21 '22 at 18:19
  • Thank you for your kind suggestion! I do believe that it is half opinion/half fact based. While I do suggest a learning path with D3, experienced user might suggest other libraries and/or additional frameworks more adapted for Looker's environment in particular. Also there is certainly an optimal path to learn since a lot of people have already been in my case when using a BI tool such as Looker or Tableau. – Hung Ho Phan Aug 22 '22 at 09:11
  • The opinion based part is the time estimation. Opinion based questions are not allowed in Stackoverflow. That's why I pointed that out. – wasserholz Aug 22 '22 at 09:39
  • I have been working professionally with d3.js for years. It is one of the most powerful tools to create own visualizations. If you are looking for specific chart types that do not exist in power bi, it might make sense to use a more abstracted charting library. E.g. plotly or chart.js. They have less customization but reduce the amount of code and time significantly. But the learning path would be be same, except for replacing d3.js with the other charting library. – wasserholz Aug 22 '22 at 09:42
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    d3.js has lots of examples which you can utilize https://observablehq.com/@d3/gallery – wasserholz Aug 26 '22 at 18:14

1 Answers1

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Your logical order of the technologies is correct however there are important technologies missing. You are looking here at aquiring the needed skills to become a frontend developer. This is a big task, that requires a lot of study and practice.

For the basis to build charts with d3.js you at least need HTML and SVG to build the DOM structure of your documents, CSS to style the document for a proper presentation and JavaScript + d3.js for the chart generation.

JavaScript, HTML, SVG and CSS go hand in hand in so it is good to learn and use them together.

wasserholz
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