It's probably not a waste of time only if your become proficient enough to use it. That said, since you're starting from scratch it makes no sense to learn an old language when you can start with a new language and learn it with the same amount of effort. In most cases, newer languages are easier to learn. Unless you mean VB.Net, learning that would be a smart idea, IMHO.
myself, i would also focus in learning SQL and PHP.....those are 2 of the most powerful languages/tools without a doubt that have aided me greatly.
I agree... learning SQL can save from writing a lot of unnecessary code and make code maintenance a lot easier... also, as far as .net and MSoftie tools more and more code jobs are going to .net from VB6 etc projects... you can see this thru the projects offered thru Guru.com... but it is still amazing what you can accomplish with VBA & VB6 using Excel as a DDE or RTD feed... and throwing the data into charting apps directly or Dbases indirectly... cj...
mBay: I've done some programming, and here's my take: * for learning purposes, choice of language is not important as long as it is object-oriented. The most important concepts to learn are creating and destroying classes and objects, and how to pass data to and from objects. * VB vs. VBA -- watch out, they are not the same! VB is stand-alone, while VBA is the visual basic macro language attached to Microsoft Office. VBA is limited in scope and worse, there are incompatibilities when trying to pass variables to and from VB and VBA. Programs with VB support often do not work with VBA for this reason. Recommend standalone VB over VBA; VB will run a lot faster because you can compile the code into an executable, while VBA is a macro that cannot run unless Excel or Word or whatever is also running. * Amibroker -- Highly recommended for backtesting as well as its full support for automation through COM and .net, jscript, vbscript, windows script host, etc. If you get VB standalone and AmiBroker, they will work together just fine. Good luck with your forays into programming.
What you should learn depends on what you are trying to do. You mentioned trading system development. There are a few routes you can go and you listed most of them. Excel has an advantage in that it has widespread use in the financial community despite its many disadvantages. A lot of trading systems have been developed with spreadsheets and VBA/add-ins. It is the VBA/add-ins combination that makes Excel so powerful. I have seen many options/swaps pricers built with Excel. VBA itself is kind of a crappy language but it gets the job done. A language like Python is much cleaner but doesn't have the universality in the financial community. I have built relatively complex trading applications in Excel and when I run into a section of code that is too CPU expensive I create an dll add-in and gain an enormous speed pickup. There are add-ins to handle virtually every funcionality conceivable. I have used add-ins for example to open an ftp connection to a server, download a zip file of T&S data, unzip it and load the parsed data into an SQL server database. People in IT are always pushing for the latest, greatest language. I've seen systems rewritten into C++, Smalltalk, and Java, and I'm sure they are now pushing Ruby and the .net languages. People in finance are content with bending Excel to get the job done.
i second, third and fourth this... and to emphasize... We just did a huge project for McGraw Hill that we HAD to complete part one in two weeks and part two in the second two weeks... My partner and I put in 320 hours in 4.5 weeks and knocked it off to rave reviews... We were brought into a panic situation because they could not get the project done with the existing python programmers and the object oriented database they were using (<b>I AM NOT</b> saying Python is bad or Object Oriented Db is bad just saying that those programmers could not get it done in 3 months of trying... and they were billing out at more than $150 an hour plus time and a half for over time.... etc... We got the project done... a major major critical one... for McGraw Hill... using the adp version of <b>MS Access 2002 with SQL Server 2005</b> as the back end with VB6 add/ins and standalone helpful exe's and Wise Standard Installation Scripts... don't discount the well worn but proven office tools... cj... HAVE STOP <img src=http://www.enflow.com/p.gif> WILL TRADE
yeah, great job. they were trying to recreate the wheel, you just threw everything together and made it work seamlessly. your name is gold right now. regards, jj
I can't really argue about the specific case, but in general I would say you are right. All the Visual Basic stuff is good for not too complex code, so at the end the point is always the same: what do we want exactly? I had the impression that the OP was not looking about anything complex, but if we are talking about a real application then Java, C++ or C# (I can't believe I can be that honest ) are probably better