As NetTecture suggested... Grab NinjaTrader, signup for a forex (MB Trading) or futures (Zen-Fire) free demo account (no funding or credit card required), or pay for a Kinetick data feed. Forex and futures Market Replay data is free. Jump in feet first, NinjaScript == C#, study the examples and build example indicators/strategies using the Wizards and study/modify the resulting code. You'll be on your way. Once you outgrow NT or it pisses you off then you can move on to something else. Good luck!
Recent Hoopla? Moved to MS years ago and I have not seen any "recent Hoopla". MS i still a dream to develop on.
MS it still best but with Metro and WinRT they are trying to introduce new marketing model and might ask you to certify and deploy your applications through their servers only in the future even for your own/own company use. Desktop will still be around for a while but they are trying to leverage their monopoly in this space. Will see how it works but it makes me nervous. Recent failure of Win8 did not make them to reconsider future direction.
Sorry to say, but this is bullshit. If you look at where MS is making tons of money (enterprise, servers) it will be clear this is not the case. Basically it is an alternatie model for limited capabilities applications - a trade in between ease of maintenance and security with openness and it has a SERIOUS positive implication. I prefer to use Metro applications whereever I can (pdf reading etc.) because it is less to bother and less to check for updates. But nothing will make the "locally installed" software go away. THere are hugh businesses paying lots of money to MS to run their own software on their own servers. And Win 8 was quite good - the "failures" are just getting fixed with 8.1 (which I rolled out on my trading floor yesterday). But really, a little less paranoia would possibly help you a lot.
Looking at future trends is part of business planning and positioning and I do not see anything pathologic about it. There is uncertainty in the community where things are headed and MS is not forthcoming or may still be looking for some hints from others who were always ahead of Microsoft in each and every technology their ventured later on.
I guess I am not the only one concerned with WinRT; not the most recent article but good overview of potential issues with advice to keep your options open regarding OS at this point: Windows RT: Runtime? Or Get Up and Run Time? http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Editorial/Windows-You-Love-Gone
I love the .Net stack and in particular C#. I love Win7, and I love a lot of other MS projects. However, if you have not noticed the most recent big time fuxxups when it comes to the newest OS, the horrible treatment of the developer community on the Web/GUI side of things (talking Silverlight, WPF, WinRT,...) to such degree that some of the leading gurus left the MS world in disgust and now program iOS, then you must have slept in the cave. MS's way setting new trends these days and reading future directions of tech development leaves a lot to be desired. I would actually say MS is one of the worst IT companies on the planet when it comes to providing long term assurances and security to plan and implement budgets for large corporate users. How many times have they communicated their support and core interest in certain technologies to only abandon them 6-18 months later. Its one of the worst things a company can do to its client base that must plan years ahead.
you gotta be joking, if you seriously traded your systems on Win8 then you must be the one called reckless. Why dont you burn roms and run your trading architecture directly on a Xbox or Nintendo box?
sure when you program FPGAs. Or else you need RDMA hardware to accomplish a kernel bypass (such as what Infiniband offers). For everyone else you still gotta take what is offered by the OS, ;-) back to you (and by the way, my comparison between my C# skills and the ones of an average C++ programmer took into account that kernel bypass should not be a consideration for C++ programmers given that even C++ causes way too much overhead (unless you use a "cut-down" C++ version) to stay within 10us latency realms equity side, and maybe 100-200us fx side, both of which might necessitate kernel bypass. So, nobody coding with a general C++ compiler should bother with kernel bypass issues.)