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At 5/22/2003 05:17 AM, Adrian Pitt wrote:
Hi Bob,
Thanks for the reply, but you still didn't answer my question :-)
I know your product has been in development for an extremely long time,
so was wondering when the public might see it.
It has already taken so much longer than expected that I don't even want to
make predictions. I can say that the EOD (end of day data) version is Real
Close Now.
Seriously, the better way to phrase the question is to ask what the current
status is. New users could start now if they are content with the current
status. The current status is that the only core testing feature not
finished for the EOD version is scaling. Then the documentation needs one
more go through to move from 85% to 100%. Also, before announcing as a
released product, I want to do some enhancements to the Systems Composer
environment to make programming trading rules a little cleaner and easier.
That's about it for the EOD version.
In other words, for EOD traders everything is functional now (except
scaling), but not quite to where I am ready to call it "released". In the
current state, I make up for the roughness of the documentation with
personal support.
I assume this is a part
time project for you, explainning the reason for the extended
development time?
Absolutely not part time!!! This software has been my full time occupation
since Spring, 1991. I starting with custom programming into my own
standalone software, supplying software for commercial trading systems and
private programming for traders. In more recent years I have been devoted
100% to the PowerST product, which is a standalone program like
TradeStation or WealthLab or Trading Recipes or Behold, where end users
program their own trading rules.
Of course I split my time between programming and supporting customers, but
in recent years the majority of my time has been programming PowerST
features and writing documentation.
There is a 91 page User's Guide and a 310 page Systems Composer Guide. The
full product description is a web site that I spend 7 months composing. The
last time I printed it out, the web site was around 125 pages. Add to this
a significant amount of documentation in help screens within the software.
I did some rough estimates recently. Say I printed the source code in small
font, 77 lines per page. And I am talking about only custom written C++
code. No third party library code. Then I stack the printed manuals, web
site printout, and printouts of help screens on top of the source code. I
decided it would be around four 500 page reams of paper. Ok, I just
measured a ream of paper with a ruler. The stack would be around 8 inches
of paper. And remember that most of this is C++ code, where every section
of code needs to designed, coded, debugged, tested.
This is not a part time job!! :-)
Or are you trying to make it perfect from the word
go?
That's more like it! :-)
Just enquiring as an interested observer.
Sure. Gives me a chance to reflect a little.
Users of trading software don't realize the development effort involved in
producing a commercial software package of this scope, with a user
interface, graphics, system composing environment, all the necessary number
crunching. I have posted to the olist about this before. Next someone is
going to tell me I am crazy and it could be done in a year or two years.
But then the person saying this has not seen the PowerST software or even
the feature set, and certainly has not themselves written a commercial
trading software package like PowerST.
By the way, I am amazed myself at the scope of development effort this
software has consumed.
PowerST has a scope of system testing features significantly beyond any
previous commercial product. But, on the other hand, unlike TradeStation,
PowerST is only system testing. It isn't a real time program. It is
specialized in the subject matter of researching trading strategies and
providing trade signals from end of day data. Given the real time support,
I would imagine that the source code base for TradeStation is at least as
large, probably significantly larger.
(I am expecting to add intraday and some real time support in the future,
but that is not the current product I am describing above)
Regards,
Adrian
Bob Bolotin
President, RDB Computing, Inc.
Developer of "PowerST: The Power System Tester"
http://www.powertesting.com
bob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
847-982-1910
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