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On Sun, Jun 28, 2009 at 10:09 AM, pk<peterk2@××××××××.se> wrote: |
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> Mark Knecht wrote: |
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> |
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>> These days I'm trading stock index futures for a living. I have |
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>> data files that I analyze in Excel over the weekend to help me make |
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>> decisions about how to trade the coming week, but I'm always fighting |
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>> Excel as it really isn't intended for the sort of math I want to do. |
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>> The math's not difficult, but I need to look at various ranges, |
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>> manage, sort and extract data from arrays, and amd then create charts. |
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>> This is getting pretty difficult in Excel these days so I've started |
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>> to wonder about writing a simple app to do what I need to do. It's not |
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>> generally difficult stuff but it requires (or I prefer) a lot of small |
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>> charts. I'm vaguely familiar with C & Pascal, but haven't programmed |
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>> in years. I don't know C++ at all. I was trained as an EE. |
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> |
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> Have you looked at using Octave? It's a Matlab clone (and thus very |
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> C-like), can output to Gnuplot and you can also create filters of your |
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> own and output to Graphviz. The language R can perhaps also be of use, |
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> depending on what you wish to accomplish... |
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|
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I haven't looked at Octave. I was thinking I should program a stand |
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alone app and not really use an existing app. It's jsut where my head |
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was. |
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|
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> |
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>> So the main question is what sort of language (and possibly |
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>> programming environment) should a complete novice look at to get his |
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>> feet wet with GUI programming. I'd like something fairly light - |
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>> performance probably won't be a huge problem - that I could run under |
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>> Cygwin or maybe compile to run native in Windows should that ever |
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>> become useful. For now it's probably a relatively simple Linux app |
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>> that I'd likely run once a week on Saturday morning on 15 to 20 |
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>> databases I collect on Friday night. |
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> |
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> Why Windows? I'm merely curious, not trying to criticize... |
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> |
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No offense taken. All the trading is done on the Windows platform |
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using proprietary trading platform apps. All the datafiles are |
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therefore sitting in Windows and it just seems easier to just run a |
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small app of my own there. I sometimes travel but still need to trade |
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so my laptop would be running Windows at that time. I'd rather do my |
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learning in the Linux environment. Less risk I'll blow away my whole |
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machines, etc., and generally a nicer group of people cannot be found. |
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:-) |
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- Mark |