I feel like I've been reinventing the wheel all this time. I'm spending hours putting this stuff into spreadsheets. I have minimal experience programming I need a handful of variables backtested (most of which are combined in a single trade) however I don't know if/how I can express them in code. I'm at a dead end here. I'm curious what's worked best for you guys. I'm looking to optimize things here. No sense in spinning your wheels to be comfortable.
I would give a huge vote to R. It's possible to transition to VBA/VB to leverage your spreadsheet skills, but learning R might be easier and a better investment of time. If programming is not your cup of tea, you could also save hours of learning by trying to develop ideas around a solid backtesting platform, like Amibroker. It still requires learning the Amibroker language, but might be a simpler way to execute your ideas. Already having an idea about what you want to accomplish gives you a huge motivational push to start attempting to codify and backtest your rules. Without really divulging your ideas, it's hard to really give a concrete answer on how to possibly express them in code. You could give a general idea to get more specific feedback.
How can you make it past the thread title and the content and still have no clue what the hell youre talking about?