I was the same as you once. This is what I did. I jumped on amazon and did a search for beginners guides to programming. I identified a series of highly recommended books. From memory "An idiots guide to programming' was actually one of them.
I also downloaded a IDE that was recommended for beginners and started practicing 'Hello world' and 'clock making' exercises. These are like the simplest programs you can create.
For trading, I used to have a copy of Metastock EOD and I just started downloading script examples then modifying the parameters to see what worked and what didn't. Eventually I moved to esignal and started modifying esignal scripts - there are hundreds of great scripts available online.
I also had programmers create scripts for me that were beyond my skill level. I am able to make simple changes to these.
I'm still a terrible programmer, but at least I have been able to create scripts that reflect my trading ideas and that's good enough for me.
It's a long road that requires a big commitment to learn, particularly if your not an analytical person. Good luck.
I'm actually at the beginning of this road right now. lulz. I'm probably going to start with the dummies and idiot's books, then move on to the Sam's books, then regular ones. Do you have any tips and further thoughts about your experience? Things you wished you done or things that'd speed up the process? tyia
1-Pen and paper. Draw a flowchart of what you want your "algo" to do.
2-After that, coding it is a piece of cake, in any language. Take a few key lines out and hire someone to do it for you or read a book in the library and do it yourself.
Hiring a programmer does normally not make much sense. A programmer can certainly code your trading system, but you can only know that the system works after it's coded. Thus, developing, coding, testing, and modifying the system must go hand in hand. This only works well when the system developer is also the system coder.
Visual strategy building tools are limited and can only create very simple algos.
So you should definitely learn programming, which is not very hard. There is free trading software with beginner's tutorials that introduce into programming and into trade algo coding.
2-After that, coding it is a piece of cake, in any language. Take a few key lines out and hire someone to do it for you or read a book in the library and do it yourself.
