This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.rstudio.com/blog/the-shiny-developer-series
Shiny is one of the best ways to build interactive documents, dashboards, and data science applications. But advancing your skills with Shiny does not come without challenges.
Shiny developers often have a stronger background in applied statistics than in areas useful for optimizing an application, like programming, web development, and user-interface design. Though there are many packages and tools that make developing advanced Shiny apps easier, new developers may not know these tools exist or how to find them.