Good question. Do recommend this? What about quantconnect? I would also appreciate some suggestions. I have absolutely no experience in algo trading, but i am very interested in that. Just a beginner.
I only have experience with IB's API, not with any other solution. IB's API has only the very basic functionality, everything else you need to program yourself. I regularly read that people who start using the API experience difficulties and are encountering quirks in its behavior and complain about the lack of documentation. My opinion is that once you've overcome that phase and understand what it does (and what it doesn't) it is rather straightforward to work with. This means that if you only want to program one algo it would not make sense to go the trouble of learning IB's API.
I think IB's api actually offers many advanced features. I can't think of any other api in retail space that offers as advanced functionality as IB's. What the api suffers from is the way it was designed from the ground up. Basic connectivity, reconnects, disconnects, the way orders are submitted, the clumsy way of defining a symbol, poor handling of position and account updates and a number other issues. Those basic features are very unstable and it takes a long time and plenty testing to write a wrapper to handle all those weird quirks.
I don't understand the question? I see there are some trading software/platform that can easily be fitted and connect to IB to run automated trading, but you are saying you will program in C#. My impression is those 3rd-party platforms are mostly for people who don't program much. Why then not program and connect using IB API which caters to all major languages
Huh, did I say something wrong? My interpretation of the opening post is that it a rather wide-ranging question. It is not very specific. So it resulted in a wide range of suggestions, ranging from a low level solution as IB's API all the way up to solutions where everything is available "out of the box". Note that the person who asked the opening question has not responded since asking the question almost half a year ago. Either (s)he found a solution, or gave up trying.
I actually have never seen those 3rd-party software/platform like Ninja, Sierracharts etc. Do you have knowledge/experience about them? It is my impression that they are software equipped with historical data for backtesting, charting, etc, provide an easy interface to test basic algos without needing to program much, can connect live data feed for those algos and route trades to supported brokers (so similar to tradestation). Am I right? definitely much easier to use than IB API which needs intense coding/testing, and with friendly gui rather than command line
No, I have no experience with Ninja, Sierracharts etc. I started my learning curve with IB's API before I heard of these. I agree that there is quite a learning curve with IB's API. Not so much in coding (although I didn't know Java when I started and had to learn that as well). But more in ensuring that you have a proper connection, and how to handle messages to/from IB's servers. Over the years I encountered some weird things and unexpected behavior, forcing me to adapt my code to make it sturdier. By now I believe that I've "seen it all" as I hardly ever need to modify my code anymore.