I have pretty much driven myself close to insanity with these various automated backtesting and trading systems. Everything from NinjaTrader, to RightEdge, to whatever. None of them have built in debugging. Does that strike you as basically insane? I am having to recompile, put print statements everywhere, and its just zapping all the energy I have for this. Does anyone know of a platform that has built in debugging and doesn't cost $80k a month? Sorry I am freaking out here I have just had it with these half baked platforms.
I tried OQ just now and can't even get it to connect to TWS. Unreal. What is the deal with all these flaky products?
No, it does not strilke me as insane that you cannot debug a proprietary software platform. There are 2 "debug" levels. First, you can build in the debugging information at compile time, which means that you would have access to some of their secret sauce. Second, libraries/code with debugging libraries compiled in slows down the code. Even if someone did provide debugging, the market data portion would probably be left out, because slowing that down can render everything else useless. They expect you to do what you are doing...putting in prints... What language are you building with? Depending on the language, you can simplify some of this by using pre-compiler options, or more advanced logging libraries that can be turned on/off at runtime. PM me if you need further info.
Well thanks for the feedback, I don't want to get into a debate here, but there are easy ways to enable debugging of a script or of the user's strategy code without enabling debugging of the pieces of the platform (the host) that a) the user has no source to and b) are of no interest to the user. This is quite easy to do. As far as performance, its easy to turn on or off debugging modes when compiling, however in managed code it makes much less difference than it does in unmanaged code (native C++). The real reason is that most people don't know how to hook in the debugger, its not an easy thing to do properly, and most of these outfits are good at making a nice IDE and hooking up data feeds, but when it comes to a true dev platform, they have no experience in that area. I was hoping there was something out there I was not aware of. Even OpenQuant requires you to debug using VS.NET as a separate process. Printing inside a loop with hundreds of thousands of iterations is simply not feasible at all. In any event I can live with OQ and VS.net, if I could get it connected to TWS. Of course OQ has no support to speak of and their forums are barely watched.
Were you able to find the videos on their site on how to do this? I know they have videos on how to connect to different providers. I do not remember it being a problem for me, but I was connecting to OpenECry. I definitely agree with you that there is a big void in the market for functional software with good support. I think OpenQuant could actually increase their revenue by hiring a novice/college kid to monitor their forum & answer questions. Most of the questions posed are not complicated and do not require a high level developer to handle. Regards, Eric
I didn't see any videos like that but I will take a look. If you know a link please let me know. Thanks for the tip. I agree, their support forum borders on hostile to anyone who is not on their level of knowledge. It's quite odd.
On the bottom of this page - http://www.smartquant.com/products.php videos #5-8 should help. I'm surprised that nobody has set up a small business to correct this inefficiency. Sort of like a small scale OpenQuant consulting firm. I think there may be some room there for a customer service/hand holding person & developer to make some money.
Openquant made it quite clear to me that they are in the business to make CONSULTING revenue at this point. The product is a driver for that side of the business - don't expect it to ever be something that is the primary revenue driver for the company. While the software has potential, they have made a conscious decision to pursue a different business model than we expect. I don't agree with their decision but at least I know what it is and I don't waste my time with their product. I'm waiting for right-edge and multi-charts to mature. Probably another couple of years at least. Until then, I'll just have to deal with my good-ole' Tradestation, Excel and other software combination kludges. -eLindy