Bokeh

What do you like best?

Bokeh was the first visualisation tool I tried after having a go with basic pyplot matplotlib graphics. It's super easy to get up and running and produce some beautiful interactive visualisations. I even tried my hand at getting a server up and running on AWS with great results. There's tons of tutorials out there as well as some stellar documentation. Overall I loved this tool (my boss was very impressed too).

What do you dislike?

I found that hosting a Bokeh server with an Ubuntu instance wasn't exactly noob friendly. I had a few difficulties installing it and connecting to the page from the internet. It worked in the end with some troubleshooting.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

Be patient with it. Try out the sample applications before going straight into your own projects.

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

I was creating a proof of concept for interactive visualisations of networks. Bokeh allowed users to interact with the network; selecting nodes to see more info, or using buttons to calculate and display network properties. I also tried a few animated cellular automata for fun.