Well, all the more power to you if you have a hard time understanding your system state without gauges and needles and green and red lights ;-) What I like, however, about Infragistics is that their charting library is well thought out, it offers thorough data binding and their docking manager UI template is awesome, very easy to customize and use as starting point for a full-fledged GUI app. Try that from scratch in ASP.net or any other web based technology (html5, JS...) and you sit there for months or pay developers thousands of dollars to code one up, and that does not even take into account the time it takes for you to properly spec up such project. GUI software in its entirety is something I would say is ALWAYS worth paying for because well-engineered libraries are really worth the price and it would take you a long time to even get close.
Nexus40. I can say a little bit of my story. Me too I give quite a lot of attention re the visual part of the software. I used java swing (I hated it, so old and inefficient). Regarding javaFx, it's not very mature. If you will encounter a problem... your chances of finding a solution on the internet are slim. Right now I'm in transition from Java to C++ (I wanted a language that is "closer to the metal" so to speak). For the GUI part I use Qt (which is plain awesome!) and for the models and everything which runs behind I use the standard C++. (although you could use Qt for almost everything, not just for the GUI). So if you want more power and flexibility (when it comes to the GUI part for example), give a try to Qt/C++. I started from the premise that you like programming and you can allocate a few months to code a great piece of software. ps: I'm not trying to start a debate here, Java is good too (higher language, faster developing time, it has it's place). But a lower language like c++ is also a good investment if you will need in the future to make critical performance / real-time software.
If I fork quanteconnect as platform what am I missing to get it all up and running on my servers? For my own automated algo trading platform?
I am interested in developing a trading platform / system. I have been programming and reverse engineering for quite some time. If you have a strategy that works, reach out to me.