If you dont have experience writing software , or software requirements...dont bother with upwork, unless you're willing to use the people who charge $100-$200 and hr and are truly professionals. Your ability to communicate what you want in a precise fashion is extremely critical to your success. Even more so if you hire an amateur. I've written several end-to-end trading platforms, and have outsourced some of the work thats not worth my time (on upwork)...very much a mixed bag. I spent almost as much time guiding the dev as I would have needed just to do the job myself.
One of the main reasons I wouldn't hire someone for a job. Half of the effort is coming up with solutions on how to achieve something, the other half is the actual code. People have different approaches on how to achieve something and if I want to modify the code later, it has to follow my exact approach. But my main reason for not hiring others is still the fact that I'm cheap.
What would you do if you had no programming skills? You give your opinion which is based on your specific situation and knowledge and assume that all people are in the same situation. I am also very cheap, can even do it for free for myself. But the problem is: I cannot program. People hire a programmer to do a job they cannot do themselves. Hiring if you can do it yourself is stupid. Unless you can make more money at the same time doing something else. My programming skills are extremely limited. I have been very satisfied with an Upwork programmer for the last 5 years. He did perfectly what was asked and at a very reasonable price. No 3 digit hourly rates, and he is not from East Europe or Asia. Just a guy from West Europe. Maybe I was lucky and picked the only good one on Upwork.
It's something that can be learned, it's not like I have a degree or work experience in that industry. Of course that's not the most efficient way to do it. Coming from a DIY culture, the only problem is the lack of time.
Everyone can learn the mechanics of drawing; but not everyone can draw. Coding, as you know, involves mechanics as well as creativity. The creativity is needed to solve problems; to put the pieces together in a way that 'makes the app.' Everyone won't be able to grasp calculus, but everyone can do math. Everyone won't be able to create the app they are imagining, but everyone can learn about, and understand: statements, loops, branches, input, output, and basic apps like, "hello world." Everyone doesn't grasp things equally, no matter the effort involved. Didn't you notice this in high school/college/in your family/on-the-job?
Not only time, with age my lack of energy/motivation increased. First job I gave was program my Tradestation indicators in NT8 code. It was cheaper for me to outsource that job than learning to program specifically in c# for NT8. I spent that time trading and made much more money than the bill I had to pay for the programming. I paid in total less than $400. That's just one 8 points move in ES with just 1 contract. Within 48 hours the job was done and since then things run smoothly without any hazzle. I would probably have been struggling many days to achieve that myself.
I would start to learn. Do i like the idea of sitting in pc and watching markets manually? , hell no. Do i like the idea of sitting in pc and programming? not really Did programming come easy? , no Have i sacrificed some of the best years in my life? yes I simply didnot have means to fund any developer other than self, goal was to test something in this field. If i would have had money, all could have been outsourced. If somewone else would have done all my trading stuff at 150$/hour rate, the project would have cost around 1.5-2m during 6-7 year period. It mostly involved cycle of testing stategies and deleting the code later.. Idk how many lines were written and deleted. By developing specific/rigidly specified idea and stopping after that, it takes less... Lately i outsourced data validation algo that was coded before on bid prices but needed it to also work on ask prices and relations between bid-ask. It involved long list of if statement that render data invalid in various ways and i didnot like writing this part before either so i decided to outsource. I only gave ~2k lines of code that was interconnected to rest of the codebase. Got many questions about pre existing code in beginning and overall it worked out similarly to coding myself. Maybe even took longer due to communication and debugging as few bugs remained. Problem was that the data validity code didnot include and means to load market data and no market data or visualizing code was given. Letting someone write those for simply testing purposes would have cost too much and taken much longer from the initial task. I think outsourcing is good in parts where explaining takes less than doing.
That's true and my argument of "if I can do it, everyone can" is fallacious. But I was thinking that someone who trades already has the necessary mental qualities to learn programming. I was most often the one who did not get it, so I never made the observation of other people. Fair point. But the long-term benefits from learning it yourself are also of value. If you needed the indicators as a one-off thing, I absolutely agree.
Just received version 2.x of an indicator in NT8 which I've spent a ridiculous amount of time troubleshooting/debugging. This developer is very popular and as such he's always very slow on updates. In fact, I've had far better/faster results with developers I've found on UpWork. I had a big project on UpWork/Guru approximately 10 years ago. The company was new and wanted to make a name for themselves, so I received premium service and attention. Extremely satisfied. Fast forward a few years later when I wanted to make updates (on a limited budget) the company was now much bigger and profitable and I was rewarded the junior programmer. With all the time I spent guiding this developer throughout the years, troubleshooting, fixing bugs, waiting and so on, I have actually wondered if it would have been just as efficient to learn to program first and then do my own project myself afterwards. In hindsight, my biggest regret is actually staying with that developer for as long as I did. Partly because I didn't want to 'put my stuff out there' and since I assumed familiarity with the project was an advantage. Later on, I eventually ditched that one and found a much better developer who actually understands what I'm saying and does a fair bit of testing before sending it over to me. Also a bonus that he does not want to rip me off. So, my experience is that there's a huge variety in what you get and it's not always true that you get what you pay for. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same programmer @virtusa is mentioning as I found a programmer on UpWork who was extremely fast/cheap and handled a very specific problem/indicator in NT8 which 10s of others asked (including the one I mentioned on top in this post) didn't see how could be done or even said it was impossible. I don't have any immediate needs for programming, but stilll want to learn it long-term when I can find the time. Currently learning options (decided it was more valuable than programming) with what little free time I have left beyond actual trading and testing/logging/researching.
i took some temp gig while i was in seattle just after college. the pay was literally non-existent and he was from california doing some hi-tech piano project. it did not go well as i was struggling financially and needed paid work. Now I am making about 200k each year most likely not take any gigs. But I am less dedicated may be someone more dedicated will join and help your project.