strange, i seem to understand everyone on this thread.
1. searching for an experienced backtester in order to get something more advanced than TS or whatever other off the shelf testing product.
2. criticising that search as naive is reasonable as well. i made that experience several times within my team. someone who is just coding usually does not get you too far if you yourself do not really, really know IN DETAIL what you want. when you are looking for something automisable, you have to go back and forth, and back and forth. better strategies, better walk forward testing, better execution speed, and this goes on and on. so, a pure coder is lost, cause there is so much interaction required between the one who "knows" and the coder, that it can hardly be done if the two functions are completely seperate.
i have now a hybrid of this setup. there is one guy who is doing statistical analysis of the time series, gets some idea out of that and starts simple backtesting on one market in tradestation (with all its limitations). once that looks fine we move it to the second guy, who is programming it in C++ and integrates into our C++ platform which optimises, tests walk forward, combines different parameter sets while taking care of correlations between them and some other things and finally sets it on semi-auto, which means in our case that the engine at our execution broker gives a signal and they fill it by phone (slippage reduction is my main motivation for doing it like this right now - i wnat my orders to be "worked").
now, the important point is, that both ghuys are developers. a pure coder does not get you too far. you most probably get either set up by the constant stream of nasty questions or you end up with an overfit your coder produced without being aware of it.
3. i understand why someone critisises nasty and aggressive conduct. but, it it nononsense, that is his style. do not take it personal. he is a pro in the end (at least i give him the benefit of doubt), so rather take his essence seriously.
actually i think the thread is misplaced in auto, that is all.
i am the good one. i understand everyone ... please don't bash, i am just joking!
