Would you collaborate with a programmer if it meant sharing your system/research?
- Thread starter Laissez Faire
- Start date
Hi, qlai,
Without giving away all details let's just say it's a system for forecasting the market. Both pre-market and intraday.
It's possible it could be automated eventually, but ultimately you're right that it does require some experience and discretion to make (good) trades.
I do think it can be traded mechanically in a more crude manner, though, and using wide stops. Personally, I use charts in order to get a better read and see if the market behaves in line with my expectations.
I've explained in great detail to this programmer what he can expect in order to manage his expectations and what the worst outcome would be on his end.
I think that would be difficult, but good suggestion.
60 hours to learn to code proficiently in C#?
I've had a few professional programmers help me out with the program as I made a few upgrades and I did bring up the subject of re-writing it. The estimate I was given was about 3-4 weeks of full-time work to do so.
I just have a hard time thinking I'll become a good enough coder to learn how to build something like this with so little study-time, but maybe I'm a slow learner.
I definitely agree that I'm at a disadvantage not knowing how to code myself, though. So it's probably something I need to do sooner than later.
I don't see why that's significant to what's being discussed here, so it's not a surprise to me that nobody asked that.
For what purpose? I don't see why I would want to share any more details...
I already explained in great detail to this programmer / aspiring trader what he can expect and have given him some details and a few demonstrations of how it all works. I've explained to him that at worst he will have very detailed statistics and a new framework for analyzing/understanding how the market works.
The benefit for me is that potentially we can create something even better together as opposed to simply hiring a programmer to do work for me without any deeper knowledge of what he's doing.
In addition to giving away my secret sauce I'm a bit concerned he'll simply leave me in the dust as soon as he gets what he needs, though. I will definitely draft up a contract before beginning, but even then I'm worried there'll be issues and that one day he may decide to not pick up the phone or stop responding...
The short answer is yes. Contracts and collaboration are how the world has progressed. I'm a software developer and full time trader. Have been doing this for years and I do work with others.
Try a junior college in your area. Talk to the instructor and pay what would be normal, but keep it on an academic level. Not your sole choice - in our shop we have paid college interns with a few who can write code. They sign an NDA, but no solution may prove to be ideal. We also have a developer on staff.
Curious what the motivation behind this post is? Are you trying to be a cool guy on ET and maybe get a few likes?
If I definitely can't explain it, it's very odd that the programmers I've hired over the years have been able to make a custom built program for me according to the clear specifications I outlined for them. 100% of the logic in the system I use was written by me. I'm just not a coder and able to do that part myself.
I already have a programmer who wants to do this, so that part is handled. He seems more than suited for the job.
Funny you should mention NDA.
I did get the firm who wrote the original program to sign one, but later on found that they had published my software under their Portfolio section on their web page boasting about how they had created an "advanced tool" for a customer. They did remove it after I saw that, though.
Point is - just not sure how much value such contracts have.
I don't agree. I asked somebody to code for me. I gave him an example (just copied the source of a free indicator). The problem seems to be that NT8 (I think that's what OP uses) has a lot of specific instructions that are not common in c#. So to know how the code just the frame of the program (like variables, specific commando's to do something...) without the mathematical part, seems to be already very difficult. There is a reason why programmers need NT8 experience to be able to program. My son has a master degree in IT. When I showed him the source code of a free indicator, he saw a lot of code that was specific NT8 code that never appeared in a standard c# program.
So first you have tpo learn the standard c# and after that you should start over again with theinstruction that exist in NT8 but are non existing in the standard c# instructions.
https://ninjatrader.com/support/helpGuides/nt8/?chart_objects.htm
In this link you see 197 pages of specific NT8 instructions. You should be able to use them all, so you need to know first of all the correct syntax and also what you need to make the instruction work.
It's very complicated if you have to start from zero. You need to take hundreds of little steps one after another. You'll be surprised how slow it goes.
When I asked information on Upwork, most programmers without knowledge of NT8 refused the job as they knew already that they should first master NT8 before they even could start on the job. If they already refuse, how can a newbie without any programming knowledge learn that quickly?