[NetTecture]

I fully have to agree with that. C# is pretty much a great langauge and it is done by really great people pushing it forward - a lot of stuff in now wihth 3.5 and coming with 4.0 is pretty revolutionary for a mainstream langauge - things like LINQ etc. have all more or less been there as side-things, but C# and .NET put them into mainstream. Finally.

You can do a LOT with C# - contrary to (old) VB it is designed as a main langauge - powerfull runtime, feature rich. I have been working with it for about 10 years now, and only sometimes do I see the need to do some C++ (MOSTLY in the form of C++/CLI, which is the form emitting classes compatible with .NET/C# - like now wrapping up the Rithmic API for use from within C#, as it comes as C++ lib files).

If you are serious about programming (not just for trading or so), make sure you learn MORE - some more language with different concepts. Real assembler may be interesting for a summer, as should be SMalltalk (the original object language), F# (functional .NET language) and maybe something else. Make sure you do not see all things from the point of view of C# ONLY.

For trading, though, C# will be more than enough. Heck, one can write serious trading software in C#, and contrary to what the (not too intelligent, it seems) people at NinjaTrader did... it does not have to be slow and crash all the time This is a lot more bad programming than a .NET fault - as can be seen in the tremendous speedups they get for Ninja 7... by redoing broken architecture.

[gooni]

Originally Posted by NetTecture »

like now wrapping up the Rithmic API for use from within C#, as it comes as C++ lib files).

Interesting point that - I'm using the Zen-Fire API directly through C# .NET and the 'test app' that I was given was Rithmic Trader - so I don't know if Rithmic wraps Zen-Fire or vice versa or neither (Rithmic may be able to use different data streams).

[NetTecture]

Zen-Fire is a resell of the Rithmic API. It exposes only a small subset (interesting enough) of what RIthmic is capable of... and as the RIthmic API works on Zen-Fire and the Rithmic operations team know about Zen-Fire Guess who is the real deal.

Capabilities of the Rithmic API missing in Zen-Fire:
* Historical data Limited, but there.
* Cross-Instrument-Triggers (stop on future triggered by forex price move, or by bid/ask move)
* Subscribe to complete exchange data (HEAVY on bandwidth - CME has around 400.000 symbols alone)
* Time based orders. I actually CAN put in an order to enter to the exchange at a specific time.

[gooni]

Very interesting. Thanks for that information.