11 replies to this topic

[BBK]

Hi, guys, I'm not a programmer myself but I have a project that I would like implemented. It is a desktop installed app which would be a trading front end. So a trader would be using it to input buy/sell for securities. The program would be constantly "talking" to the broker's servers to get data and to submit data.

Several things to take into consideration:

for an open source project
must be extremely stable - rock solid
must be lightening fast - time is money
extremely well-built GUI for user


Which language do you recommend? From preliminary research I'm leaning towards python. But I am open to other suggestions and recommendations. Would appreciate your input, comment, suggestions, etc...

thank you

[Victor]

Python is a great language, the only drawback is unless the end user has Python installed, the deployment .exe can be rather large (Mac has a built in Python interpreter but it's usually out of date). Personally, I would recommend C++ or Java.

[BBK]

Thanks Victor. If that is the only drawback... then python is looking good. Something else that is pretty neat with python is that the program would be ok for linux/win/mac environments with no modification. At least that's what I understand, right?

But getting back to the disadvantage you mentioned, how do other installed programs written in python get around this? or they don't and just have a huge file?

[WingedPanther]

Most any language can do what you are talking about. The real issue is looking at how steep your learning curve would be.

[BBK]

yeah, maybe I wasn't clear on that, I want to hire programmers to write this, not do it myself :-)

Before I start on the journey though, I'd like to have some assurance that I'm using the "best" language for the job.

[Xav]

C++ is a good choice for most purposes, although most modern languages will cope just fine. And besides, we could help you with writing it yourself...

[Chinmoy]

Go for java. Nothing is better than it for what you want, and it is very logical and high level..so wont be a problem.

[G_Morgan]

If you are looking at cross platform then be careful about what libraries are available. Wxwidgets is probably the best cross platform option for Python but it has it's issues.

Personally I might look towards something like JRuby so you can utilise the Java API. Swing isn't perfect but would be safer than Wxwidgets IMHO (of course you could also use SWT with anything that runs on the JVM which is similar to Wx but better).

There is a Python interpreter for the JVM (Jython) but I picked JRuby because Sun Microsystems have put a huge effort into making it work well with Java.

[Xav]

For J+ there is a version of VS2008 available.

[BBK]

G_Morgan, afaik python has extensive libraries.
the rest of what you wrote went flying past my head - lol
there are many java open source trading applications in varying degrees of development and at the risk of sounding like a total idiot, I don't like the way they "look" - I mean aesthetics, nothing to do with the guts of the program. I just hate the java "look" know what I mean?

[ducks and runs]

[G_Morgan]

BBK said:

G_Morgan, afaik python has extensive libraries.
the rest of what you wrote went flying past my head - lol
there are many java open source trading applications in varying degrees of development and at the risk of sounding like a total idiot, I don't like the way they "look" - I mean aesthetics, nothing to do with the guts of the program. I just hate the java "look" know what I mean?

[ducks and runs]

Python has extensive libraries on Unix systems. Getting them to work on Windows is another thing.

You don't like the Swing metal theme then? Swing now has passable native emulation (though you have to specify that you want to use it in the program). If you don't trust it then there's always SWT which actually uses the native widgets on each platform similar to wxwidgets with Python. There are also bindings to most native widget sets directly. Swing is not the only option.

The point is even on Unix the JVM has much better library support than Python and it's libraries will generally work on every platform. There are Java bindings to almost every library imaginable.

The wonderful thing is you can reasonably take advantage of this without subjecting yourself to Java thanks to the wonders of JRuby and various other languages than now run on the JVM.

[Victor]

You can also configure the look and feel of Java applications. You can give it a native look easily:

try {
    UIManager.setLookAndFeel(
        UIManager.getSystemLookAndFeelClassName());
} catch (UnsupportedLookAndFeelException ex) {
  System.out.println("Unable to load native look and feel");
}

There are also sites that provide look and feels that have been specially written like Home - javootoo.com
I'm not a fan of the default Swing look and feel either