Why Trading softwares breakdown when they are upgraded

gmst · Jan 30, 2014

mgookin said:
I was told by a Microsoft engineer that the marketing department controls when a product gets released regardless if whether it works at all. So when "release day" arrives, whatever piece of trash they have in development goes out the door. And that's why there are thousands of updates in the lifetime of a piece of trash software.

For trading software, Trading Technologies is the best on the planet.

Thanks, actually this hypothesis makes a lot of sense and could explain why things break down with such regularity.

gmst · Jan 30, 2014

dom993 said:
Actually, MS doesn't do a better job ... try using Outlook 2013 on gmail using IMAP, and see how that generates GBs of traffic *daily* ... or try using Excel 2013 with large-size spreadsheets (mine are routinely in the 50MB+ range), and see how it crashes all the time.

Producing quality software takes a lot of resources & time, of which a good chunck should go to testing ... but testing is most often half-done, and you know the outcome.

In fairness, most software are incredibly complex nowadays, making the development & testing so difficult, despite all the nice tools.

I haven't used excel 2013, but 2010 was fine. Yes you have a point that some functionalities can break down, but something like sumproduct() does not break down after an upgrade. But with trading software, such basic stuff breaks down everytime after an upgrade. And this costs us money as traders. Many a times, software stops working or gives weird results, become unstable during live markets, post an upgrade. The intensity and frequency of breakdowns and glitches experienced by trading software is probably 10x more than a more main stream software say Office or even operating system that powers iphone for example.

And of course Dom, I agree that most software are incredibly complex nowadays.

But a software like MS-Office or Apple's operating system for iphones is much more complex than Sierra Charts or Tradestation or Multicharts software. Both Office and iphone operating system don't breakdown and experience as much glitch as trading software.

And so I am wondering what are the reasons for it?? Very limited testing, or lesser quality programmers or something else.

SteveH · Jan 30, 2014

There's only ever been one programmer for Amibroker. That dude (Tomasz) is SOLID.

gmst · Jan 30, 2014

sprstpd said:
Some companies emphasize testing more than others before releasing software. It is possible that the culture of the trading industry results in decision makers downplaying the importance of testing software (afterall, the company exists to facilitate trading, not coding).

That being said, I suspect you are encountering a sample bias here. I think all software developers suffer from bad testing in one form or another mainly because it is a very hard problem to solve.

I am 90% sure that I am not encountering a sample bias. Lets compare trading software with Mac's operating system (millions of lines of code), probably trading software like Ninja will have 20k-40k lines of code. So, the level of complexity of Mac's operating system is 100x-1000x than Ninja or Multicharts. But the issues that Ninja and Multicharts experience are much more.

A possible reason could be trading software developers have very small market - they sell very few licenses and they use new added features with this new edition as a big marketing strategy to sell more licenses. So, maybe they concentrate a lot more on adding new functionality and correspondingly spend much less time on proper testing. Just a guess.

gmst · Jan 30, 2014

SteveH said:
There's only ever been one programmer for Amibroker. That dude (Tomasz) is SOLID.

You are correct Tomasz is SOLID.

So, are you suggesting that it is more of a case of lesser gifted programmers at other trading software firms like Ninja Multicharts, Tradestation Sierra etc.? Please note that I don't own Amibroker so can't comment on how many breakdowns/glitches Amibroker experiences compared to other software vendors.

sprstpd · Jan 30, 2014

gmst said:
Lets compare trading software with Mac's operating system (millions of lines of code), probably trading software like Ninja will have 20k-40k lines of code. So, the level of complexity of Mac's operating system is 100x-1000x than Ninja or Multicharts. But the issues that Ninja and Multicharts experience are much more.

I don't think that is an apples to apples comparison. You probably only use 25% of the operating system code on a day-to-day basis, but you probably use 75% of trading software code. So what I'm saying is that there are probably plenty of bugs you haven't encountered in operating systems because you simply don't use that functionality.

From personal experience, I don't find there are a higher incidence of bugs in trading software as compared to other software. I don't use Ninja or Multicharts though. You obviously feel differently, but it is possible you feel that way because you use a larger percentage of the trading software codebase.

InterestingUser · Jan 30, 2014

gmst said:
Lets compare trading software with Mac's operating system (millions of lines of code), probably trading software like Ninja will have 20k-40k lines of code.

20k-24k of lines? What are you smoking?

Oh man, this dude is awesome.

gmst · Jan 30, 2014

InterestingUser said:
20k-24k of lines? What are you smoking?

Oh man, this dude is awesome.

I said leave my thread if you have nothing positive to offer. Otherwise, come up and tell us how many lines of code Ninja has????? Stop acting like a 5th grader.

Edit: Till now you have made 3 posts on ET and all 3 on this thread. There is a good chance that you work for a trading software vendor and you are sulking when I said probably programmers who work for trading software firms are 2nd rate programmers compared to guys who work for Microsoft/Apple/Google/Oracle etc. Grow up man, control your ego - this is online world and we are just having a civilized conversation.

InterestingUser · Jan 30, 2014

gmst said:
You are correct Tomasz is SOLID.

So, are you suggesting that it is more of a case of lesser gifted programmers at other trading software firms like Ninja Multicharts, Tradestation Sierra etc.? Please note that I don't own Amibroker so can't comment on how many breakdowns/glitches Amibroker experiences compared to other software vendors.

So here you are already contradicting your 100% sure posting of few pages ago. A true master! I thought you would know for sure.

Let's see again

gmst said:
1) Trading software vendors do very limited testing compared to MS?
2) Programmers who work for Ninja, TS, MC, Amibroker, Sierra etc. are piss poor programmers and write highly unorganized and error prone code compared to programmers working for bigger non-trading software firms?
3) Real time system programming that is required in trading is the most important cause for so many bugs? If so, then why NASA rocket launches do not suffer from so many bugs?

So what about Sierra Chart, TS etc.

So in the end you have absolutely no clue at all?

1) How do you know that software vendors do very limited testing compared to whoever? Where are the facts, Mr Assange?

2) We are still waiting for your insight knowledge in regards to source codes.

3) another master thesis

Scataphagos · Jan 30, 2014

gmst said:
Trading software often experience break in performance/weird unexpected behavior/very basic functionality also breaks down ALWAYS post an upgrade.
http://www.multicharts.com/discussion/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=45775
http://elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?t=160107

I wonder What is the reason?

It's just new and with glitches. Years ago when I was an insurance broker... if a company announced "new software" it was always 18 months of SNAFU.... to be avoided until they had the time to fix things. "New software" is a curse for high-volume traffic.