How long would it take for me to learn how to back test strategies using tradestation? I have 0 programming experience but am not a complete idiot, can understand logic, went to college, etc.... For example.. What if I wanted to do something generic, like buy .10 below pivot, stop loss if trade goes .15 against me and sell at R1? Is this considered complex as programming goes?
I would consider this straight forward. I think an experienced TS & EL person could do a rough cut of this in 15 minutes. Of course, it will take you a much longer time to get your feet wet. Unfortunately I can't give you a good estimate - when I first used EL, I already had extensive programming experience. I taught intro level programming for a while - it is hard to predict how fast it will click for someone. But having good logic/problem solving skills is a major leg up.
That is definitely not complex and seems like a very good beginning project. You would only have to code up the math for the pivots and add some lines for the entries/exits. Get some of the books on the subject and take some classes from Tradestation to get the process going well. You will want the Easy Language reference for sure. The learning curve for programming can be steep at first but once you get on to it you will be pretty well empowered to backtest about anything you can think of.
I found a pdf 360 page reference manual.....I'll talke a look at it. Hopefully, I can begin testing some simple stuff fairly quickly. Esignals language has proven to be very difficult, hopefully TS is a lot easier.