programming language

[adamscj]

In this day and age, I'd personally avoid Java - it's old & tired and not moving forward in the leaps that C# is.

C# is simply amazing, although old programmers like me do have a bit of a time learning OO concepts if they haven't used them before. C# is the most complete language I have ever seen in terms of having all the supporting tools pretty much built in (debugger, IDE, source control, multilingual, UI controls etc).

Completely disagree. To say that Java is old & tired is criminal, it's by far the most used programming language in the financial industry. For C# you're pretty much tied to Visual Studio and whilst this does have full integration of debugger, IDE, SCM etc it's expensive and difficult to customize. Java has all the same tools with similar levels of integration mostly available for free and with many active communities continuously working to improve them. Have you tried the latest community (free) edition of IntelliJ IDE? With all the free plugins available it beats VS hands down for ease of use and richness of features.

I'm not saying C# is bad or wont be the language of choice for the future but right now you can't beat Java for 90% of cases

 

[wackypete2]

APL ranks up their for me. I could never make friends with it.

I dabbled with assembly programming for the mototorola 68000 series chipset. Hated it, hated it, hated it. Debugging was a nightmare in the middle of an already bad dream.

Peter

 

[robster970]

I dabbled with assembly programming for the mototorola 68000 series chipset. Hated it, hated it, hated it. Debugging was a nightmare in the middle of an already bad dream.

Peter

How about writing 6502 assembly language, turning into decimal and poking it directly into memory. Debugging consisted primarily of "Does the machine lock up?" and putting breaks in. Oddly I quite enjoyed it. Long time ago.

 

[wackypete2]

How about writing 6502 assembly language, turning into decimal and poking it directly into memory. Debugging consisted primarily of "Does the machine lock up?" and putting breaks in. Oddly I quite enjoyed it.

Sorry, I don't comprehend that!

Long time ago.

ahhh...those were the days, eh?

Peter

 

[robster970]

It's in my nature to learn how to do things that are really awful to do for some reason.

 

[DionysusToast]

Completely disagree. To say that Java is old & tired is criminal, it's by far the most used programming language in the financial industry. For C# you're pretty much tied to Visual Studio and whilst this does have full integration of debugger, IDE, SCM etc it's expensive and difficult to customize. Java has all the same tools with similar levels of integration mostly available for free and with many active communities continuously working to improve them. Have you tried the latest community (free) edition of IntelliJ IDE? With all the free plugins available it beats VS hands down for ease of use and richness of features.

I'm not saying C# is bad or wont be the language of choice for the future but right now you can't beat Java for 90% of cases

Let me just clarify - I'd been involved with a large number of Java projects - the most complex being a business to business messaging system which handled both the messaging end and the business application integration. What a pain in the ass that was - not just to develop but to maintain - all these free bits of unsupported software falling over everywhere.

One of the issues with Java is the choice you mention as well as the nature or open source software in general. It's free - it develops at a snails pace via concensus and it is largely unsupported.

C# is developed by a dedicated team at Microsoft and hence has taken over Java in terms of capabilities. Let's also face some facts - the Java based UIs are 10 ancient. Look at SIlverlight or Adobe Air in comparison.

Having 300 IDEs to choose from is a distinct disadvantage, especially when you choose a new one, build up a team and find each member of your team all worked on/prefers different platforms.

I not long ago sat on a committee for a Japanese MNC where they had to decide on technical direction. A lot of work was done and Java was binned in favour of C#. This is setting direction for the next decade though and for non-trading software. This is mostly accounting/manufacturing stuff where desktop integration is extremely important.

Anyway - my prediction - Java will die out in the next 10 years.

 

[adamscj]

Anyway - my prediction - Java will die out in the next 10 years.

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on that one

 

[DionysusToast]

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on that one

I can't agree to that...

 

[robtrip]

Hey guys, according to the OP this is mainly to beef up the application form.. having done a bunch of internships on various trading desks i'd say the main thing you want on there is excel vba then maybe some java/c++ but tbh practically every flow desk will be using excel (albeit very modified) for their day to day stuff. unless you're looking at the electronic trading or systematic strategy stuff (hft or automated execution) then VBA should be sufficient.
i don't know any real traders who get really stuck into c++/java even if they know how, its not their job tbh