I’ve spent the last months going back and forth between data visualization with Tableau and AI assisted coding and development. Beyond the ‘vibes’, I continue to be curious about the AI engineer path and the possibilities that lie there. I realize that some would say that it’s not necessary for it to be an either/or situation. However, if I want to truly develop my skills in either one, splitting my time evenly with both is not going to be effective or a smart use of my limited time.

I explored the “AI-Assisted Coding for Developers and the “Software Development with Winsurf courses and took Build with AI: Create a Data Analytics Dashboard with Lovable but instead of using Lovable (Way too Vibey?!), I utilized the prompts, tweaked them and built it using Claude Code in Cursor. I built the Dataize application via this route and it functioned and wasn’t too bad. I got steps 1-2 (Data Upload + Data Cleaning) to work but the visualization and dashboard was a bit wonky. A good start nonetheless.

I also completed the Creating Dashboards in Tableau on Datacamp and the Creating Interactive Tableau Dashboards on LinkedIn. Although not full dashboards, I did create two Tableau projects from this. First, a visualization of the the global languages at four Texas school districts.

I then took the data from a previous project (the side by side comparison tool) and created a TEA Ratings Directory Tool 21-22 that features an interactive map of all Texas schools with a pop-up displaying each school’s rating information. The tool can by filtered by rating, region, district type and school type.

Continuing with pursuing both paths is keeping me from developing deeper skills in either at this point. The limited proprietary nature of Tableau concerns me. It requires a significant amount of investment in learning click-throughs that keep me within that company’s tool and ecosystem. The path of AI-assisted development (and possibly AI Engineer) seems to have a lot more flexibility and opportunity. My interests in data visualization, design, user interactivity, etc. will all still be useful on this AI Developer/Engineer path.

So, I think I’m beginning to get some clarity on what the focus needs to be for the path forward.