Quote from garchbrooks:
The less risk there is involved in a trade (e.g, some well-known arb), the more the platform matters. If your trajectory is to take your business and put it on a colo and run some fancy algorithm, you still need to focus on developing the code right so you don't get screwed in the future when your VB/EasyLanguage/stuff-that-could-be-coded-by-anyone needs a costly, expensive re-architecting.
If you have some sophisticated hedged trade and a long-term forecast, you can hire anybody and write the code in visual basic for all it matters. Why even bother with customization? If you are getting away with 10-second executions and can use java to talk to Interactive Brokers, you can hire anyone has a pulse and 100-level computer science class training.
most people use 29west. everyone is colocated. everyone uses c++ for infrastructure. everyone connects directly to exchanges (fix and proprietary binary). infiniband, solid state drives, cep are all used. now fpga is the latest. IMO, this is commodity but you cannot hire anyone. most programmers are not good. i believe in the 10 years to be good at programming. also, most trades are not very complex at all. you might be surprised whats profitable.