<r>We split it up across lots of top-end PC workstations. That way the system(s) that have to touch the whole raw OPRA spew don't do much with it - just the usual market data vendor stuff. (We don't do that part ourselves - we have Activ do it for us (<URL url="http://www.activfinancial.com/">http:/...

<t>(This is along the same lines as Cuchulainn's question, but I picked out DCFC's line to quote before I got to his post...)QuoteOriginally posted by: DCFC...The right measure is given identical programming skill for a given problem what runs fastest for a given amount of effort ?...I don't dispute...

<t>Agreed 100%, but by adding my parenthesized qualification, I didn't mean "the code will work 99.5% of the time, but the other 0.5% will bite you in the ass in an ugly way." That is what is more likely to happen in the (all too common) pathological C++ instances of this kind of thing. What I meant...

<t>The funny thing to me is that the:Dim a, b as Doubleline that has been batted around here as an example of the horrible flaws of VB is actually a fine example of one of the many GOOD things about VB!Sure, in VB6 (but not in VB.NET), "a" will unexpectedly have type Variant, but the code will still...

<t>Jumping back from "duck typing" to the original question...What you really need to do is learn how to think like a programmer, and in particular like a modern, object-oriented programmer. C++, Java and the .NET languages are more similar than they are different, as far as fundamental concepts go....

Perhaps it might be more apropos to ask: "What have we taught God?" As human intellectual constructs go, the idea of God must be at or near the top of the all-time 'most influential' list. And when man made God in his own image, did he do a lousy job, or all too good a job?

<t>I agree with most of anamini's remarks, but the original question at the head of the thread was: "What do quants and traders see as the tradeoff of using C++ over other OO languages such as Java?" That's a topic that has generated a lot of heat in the past, but that doesn't mean it's not a reason...

<t>Near-limitless flexibility is great in theory, but in practice it tends to lead to maddeningly obscure bugs and code that is a nightmare to maintain and re-use. It doesn't help that C++'s reputation as the language of choice for uber-geeks has cultivated a conventional "cool" coding style that te...

<t>Meaning that the more skilled and/or luckier poker players, who get up from the table with a bigger slice of the collective starting bankroll, go on to use their newly acquired "capital" more lucratively than the losers would have? That definitely has "positive expected value" for them, and for t...

<r>I would personally prefer TextPad to either Emacs or WinEditor for plain-text wrangling. Emacs in particular is a hideous thing to have to use in this day and age - the learning curve is brutal. There's no doubt that it is amazingly powerful for a non-GUI application, but that makes it kind of li...

<t>It's hard to see how a poker game could be monetarily "positive sum" for the players as a group, but it is easy to see how it could be so in a broader sense: - In 'total utility', if the players derive net non-monetary benefits from the game - entertainment, education... - Monetarily, considering...

<t>Most of the above discussion is correct and informative, but it looks like some of the respondents are glossing over the difference between VBA and plain VB.VBA == 'Visual Basic for Applications' is Microsoft's version of Visual Basic that is 'hosted' inside a bunch of Microsoft applications (pri...

Dominic - Why the dump on VB.NET? Especially considering that you seem fairly neutral on C#, and VB.NET and C#.NET are pretty darn close to identical (and both are near-clones of Java, for that matter).

<t>Walkenbach's book is quite good, if wordy. (That's probably not a disadvantage for an absolute beginner, though.)Once you have a little more experience, get a copy of "VB & VBA in a Nutshell", by Paul Lomax (one of O'Reilly's outstanding 'Nutshell' series of programming handbooks). VBA has a ...

<r>See also CNet for reviews: reviews.cnet.comYou will be hard pressed to get a 17" LCD for $400 US, unless you have a very appealing corporate discount - the best consumer prices for 17" are $430-$500 for good brands. If you see something for $400, it will probably be either 'no name brand' or an o...