Tradestation EL is pretty easy stuff. IMO it does not do HF well or at all but down to 1min bars it cannot get any easier - I do not run math intensive algos either so no opinion on that.
The question is somewhat abstract. The language has nothing to do with the trading PLATFORM you are using. It's all about the interop....and the API specs. Example: interactive brokers API. Easy Language is HANDS DOWN the easiest and fastest way to trading system development. It has good interop with Excel as well. Excel VBA alone is NO TRADING PLATFORM. You must build that with a TON of vba code to get even close to the platform functionality of Tradestations (circular buffers, trade position stats, etc, etc). I saw a example of this when someone needed a Ninja solution for a very simple system implementation in Tradestation Easy Language. Easy Language: 20 lines of code Ninja/C#: 120 (2 pages) of code.
For now, all I need would be to receive data feed and send orders from my excel. Is there an example besides the old one on Sterling website?
Sounds simple, but tough to implement. Excel is STA (single threaded architecture). Nearly all realtime platforms are multithreaded. Funny you mention "old". Everything regard prop platforms is "old"...LOL. Many haven't been upgraded in 5-10 years. That's quite a "tell" into the state of the prop trading business.
ninja is overengineered in many places as far as what they use clases for.... so it requires a lot of code sometimes to do simple things. it's possible to write tight code in c#, c# is not inherently any more difficult than easy language. also the ide's for c# are better than the tradestation IDE, and that makes a big difference in learning the language.
What about with regards to Ninja version 7 ? Any improvement ? Built-in circular buffers ? More indicators ?
I mentioned in an earlier post that I used this fella to Attempt to automate some simple strategies for me. I don't want to bash but this whole "open source" idea is fine on the surface, but if you are not an advanced "coder" you should be prepared to pay handsomely for Tradelink to tweak your code. I requested a simple Breakout strategy 2 parameters that a Chimpanzee= me can get up and trading in 10 minutes with Ninjatrader, Tradelink was unable to get it to work. Actually further attempts would require a yearly contract. In all fairness this uncompleted strategy was attempted for free because the other 3 attempted strategies could not trade through 1 session. IN the end I have a handful of uncompleted strategies that Tradelink refused to fix unless I signed up for 12 month support contract.
I think tradelink fills a good niche but can't be a 100% solution for a non-programmer to develop a strategy in their own lab. As a programmer, I like being able to see the whole of the code and make tweaks as needed. As anyone working on systems knows, there is a lot of changing/testing of things. For project type work, it's the programmer's job to make sure the specifications are nailed down tight before you start writing code. This is tough to do sometimes and expensive in terms of time spent. I'd recommend tradelink for some situations: - you have a clear system that you want to implement but current products won't suffice - you want to be able to switch platforms relatively easily.. this can be huge when it comes to being locked down - you are a programmer and can understand what's going on under the hood - you need _full_ flexibility to basically take tick data and do whatever the heck you need to to make trading decisions Reasons 2, 3, 4 make it a very good option for me.