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huayen
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Joined: July 26th, 2008, 10:28 pm

Newbiee's question: C++ vs C++

July 31st, 2008, 12:40 am

Hello,Currently I am a MFE student, plan to choose QF ans my future career.I am familiar with C++, VBA, MAtlab, but never used C# or Java. Do you guys think I need to learn C# or Java. Do you guys think I need to study C# and Java which may bring more strength to me for my future job interview?Also, among C++, C#, Java, Matlab,......which is the most popular? I am familiar with C++, (and also FORTRAN, but this may not be useful for finance), is it sufficient for job hunting? Thanks.-Huayen
 
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aiQUANT
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Joined: June 4th, 2008, 6:20 pm

Newbiee's question: C++ vs C++

July 31st, 2008, 7:07 am

you should learn F#
 
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spmacdonald
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Joined: February 18th, 2008, 5:42 pm

Newbiee's question: C++ vs C++

July 31st, 2008, 1:01 pm

Use/learn whatever tool makes your life the easiest, that is, the most productive.I think that when designing large, complex systems where performance is a hard constraint there is no other choice than to use C++. You will pay for this through a longer development cycle however.In general it is never a bad thing to be multilingual.Matlab is typically used as a prototyping/exploratory tool. If you know C++, matlab is straight forward. Being familiar with matlab's toolboxes is a definite advantage when working under a deadline.For the C#/Java question... My shop is strictly C#/.NET, say what you will about Microsoft, their tools have a lot of polish, there is a reason that 99% of the world uses their product. C# and Java are very similar languages, the biggest difference between them I would say is the frameworks at their disposal. In this respect .NET is clearly superior: better functionality, better performance, better documentation. The downside is vendor/platform lock in. One thing that is hard to over look is the integration the MS tools have. If you are working in QF chances are your end users are going to want to look at some kind of spreadsheet and that means excel. VSTO is really quite good, way better than VBA, you are able to leverage all of the .NET functionality through either VB.NET or C# and basically 'host' the components in any office program. No other software vendor even comes close to this kind of functionality. Finally, Visual Studio is by far the best IDE out there, although Netbeans is becoming pretty usable.Of course if you are developing cross platform apps, Java is the only way to go.Hopefully that wasn't too rambling...
 
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AndyNguyen
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Joined: December 10th, 2007, 4:08 am

Newbiee's question: C++ vs C++

July 31st, 2008, 6:42 pm

spmacdonald,You brought the point about VSTO being quite good. I agree to a certain point.We are a C#/.NET shop as well and when we traveled into the land of VSTO, we got to a point of saying "Ok, we developed this thing. How do we get it to all of our machines?"And deployment is a pain.That was some months ago. What's going on in that front? Did MS make any news on it?
 
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spmacdonald
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Joined: February 18th, 2008, 5:42 pm

Newbiee's question: C++ vs C++

July 31st, 2008, 7:28 pm

Its funny, I had the same pains with deployment. I think that it is a one time learning process, once I understood how to configure a windows installer package I was good to go. Initially it sucks, I was cursing for a full two days.I have read a little bit about MS's ClickOnce deployment, I think it is a new feature in VS2008, I have not used it before though.
 
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AndyNguyen
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Joined: December 10th, 2007, 4:08 am

Newbiee's question: C++ vs C++

August 1st, 2008, 12:16 am

We have vs2008 and know about the ClickOne thing but the whole thing is such a big turn off for task that shouldn't cost us that much time. Hence, we didn't spend much time on that VSTO frontSo do you still recommend VSTO knowing about this deployment thing?
 
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spmacdonald
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Joined: February 18th, 2008, 5:42 pm

Newbiee's question: C++ vs C++

August 1st, 2008, 1:02 pm

I agree, the process is insanely broken. I am definitely not trying to defend MS here, but for building office based applications VSTO's good features far out weigh the pain of distributing the solution. Plus, once you have figured out how to create a proper installation package, it is relatively painless. The initial investment of time is substantial unfortunately. What did you decide to use instead of VSTO?
 
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ZmeiGorynych
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Joined: July 10th, 2005, 11:46 am

Newbiee's question: C++ vs C++

August 1st, 2008, 8:31 pm

Java is a severely crippled version of C++ (as far as quant research purposes are concerned). It has all that extra http, tcp etc support, but that's not relevant to finance, usually. I'd say your employability as a quant is enhanced more by going deeper into C++ than acquiring nodding acquaintance with java or C#.
Last edited by ZmeiGorynych on July 31st, 2008, 10:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.