I wasn't expecting such a debate! It seems like some people prefer to pay more for their programmers. God bless you all for keeping America's IT industry afloat. More and more, however, the reach of the internet is commoditizing programmers. For example, I can find a programmer in California to create a website for $45 an hour. But I use a hard-working guy in Bangalore instead--and he does a fantastic job for $5 an hour. There's no reason these economics can't apply to TradeStation programmers...they're not NASA scientists. For those worried about IP theft, there's plenty of ways to protect yourself. The easiest way is to outsource pieces of the project and then combine the pieces and set the parameters yourself. Anyways, I did in fact get several good offers via PM. My thanks to each of you......
Why do people always want discount programming? Do people not view it as "real" work because it's "just typing"? Programming is extremely complicated and error-prone. It's a skill and an art that takes many years of hard work to get halfway good at. There aren't all that many people who can do it well, and the vast majority of them already have jobs. ESPECIALLY if you are staking large sums of money on the result of the programming (as is the case with a market indicator), why on earth would you want to cut corners? Very few people would make the same kind of absurd demands in any other field that programmers routinely get. "I want a competent contractor to build me a house, and I'm willing to pay 10% of market rates for the work, at most." This is all the more puzzling on a finance-oriented board, where people (supposedly) understand market dynamics. Would you open a restaurant and then buy the cheapest meat available to serve to your customers? Open a coffee shop and serve store-brand Folger's Crystals? Hire the cheapest lawyer you can find to go to court for you? Or would you look into the candidate's reputation and previous jobs, and check out their references? Someone who is good and has the track record to prove it has no shortage of work offers. Why do people assume programming is any different? (Maybe because everyone has a 12 year old nephew or cousin who is a "good with computers," so they assume it must not be a big deal if a 12 year old can be "good with computers"...) Cheap programmers are cheap for a reason. They typically have little or no professional (i.e. for money) experience. When they get such experience, they stop being cheap. There is high demand for good programmers who produce proven results. Good programmers command high hourly prices because that is what the market will bear for good programming. If nobody was willing to pay $100-200 an hour for a top programmer, the top programmers wouldn't charge that much. You get what you pay for. Caveat emptor.
With respect Raul... My opinion (right or wrong) is that your analogies don't apply in this case--assuming one hires skilled programmers who just happen to be motivated to work for less. Programming is all bits, 1's and 0's, true and false. Either the code does what you want it to or it doesn't. It doesn't matter how much you pay for it, as long as it works. In any case, my mission here is accomplished. I have found several EL programmers who will do it for $20/hr or less with a guarantee on their work. Thus this will likely be my last post for a while. All the best to everyone here........
It's true -- programming is all 1's and 0's, it either works or it doesn't. Likewise, your house either stays up, or it collapses. You either win your legal case, or you lose. Customers either come back to your restaurant, or they don't. If you can pull it off using cheap materials, great, more power to you -- just look at McDonald's and Burger King and Taco Bell. Just don't expect to win any gourmet dining awards.
Would also welcome PM's from Easylanguage programmers. Particularly interested in people who can convert Metastock to EL and TS8 to TS2000i and have experience of writing tight code for Radarscreen. I have a couple of things where it makes more sense to pay someone with better knowledge than me than to invest the time learning. Some is simple i.e a snippet of code or function so I am looking at price - just need someone who knows more about functions than me. e.g need to convert this from MS into TS Ref(BarsSince(H>1.5*Ref(C,-1)),-1) Others are complex (and require statistical knowledge) so makes more sense to pay up for tight code that doesn't hog resources.
I don't think you can compare the two, website programming and EasyLanguage programming, for the simple reason that website programmers are everywhere. Not so for the second one, if you're looking for real professionals. Good luck, anyway.
You have absolutely no idea of what you are talking about... For one, your analogy of a contractor to build a house at 10% discount is flawed for the simple reason that a contractor can't reuse his work, but a programmer can. When I write code, I make sure that it is designed in a way that it will be reused in a form of a library/module. If a client requires similar work, it may only take 15% of the effort to reproduce a similar result at 1/10 the time. Well guess what! When you've been in the business for 5, 10 or 15 years I can assure you that you barely code anything, but reuse a lot of your existing work. For example, for over 5 years I had been building financial application frameworks. When a client got a quote from me for an application, I told them $X,000 and 6 months. This client's other quotes for the same project was in the order of 100 times more expensive and nobody could do it in less than a year. And yet my competitors were quoting on the basis of a full R&D team to their disposal... I was by myself! Why was I so cheap? Has nothing to do with quality. I ended up delivering in 5 months and under budget. Clients were so happy and impressed I have been doing business with them ever since. Second, "Cheap programmers are cheap for a reason. They typically have little or no professional (i.e. for money) experience." Wrong (see above again for answer)! You think that because some dude who charges above market for a project that automatically makes him good? You've got a few things to learn. Think about it! If I know what I like and know what I want to do. That allows me to selectively reject most contracts regardless of the money and do it well, fast and efficiently? In a year I can do many, many more smaller, less paying projects. But if you have that one guy who takes on ANY project just because it pays well (which is most cases). What kind of professionalism do you think he'll put into this 'annoying' project. Your statement on 'you get what you pay for' is complete CRAP! So your saying that Linus Torvalds, one of the most respected software programmer in the world is cheap quality just because 80% of his work is done for FREE!! Or what about the 2 million or so open source programmers (like myself) who contribute hundreds of lines of code each day for FREE! Makes no sense! Jeach!
Why don't you just get a few programmers to quote the job and see what price they come back with. You may be suprised to find that those charging less per hour quote a higher final figure. Runningbear