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Ask HN: What is so great about Bloomberg Terminal?

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Re: Ask HN: What is so great about Bloomberg Terminal?

#151

Post by krallja »

ptaipale wrote: post #79
Qwertious wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vim is an amazingly good concept , but the actual implementations completely lack a decent user experience. Like, when you do clearly-suboptimal key combinations (like going past a 4-line paragraph by hitting j 4 times instead of just pressing } once),there should be some side-window suggesting better practices. To be fair, Kakoune does that, but there's still a lot of low-hanging fruit like that.

This particular example makes assumptions: that hitting j four times is worse than entering } once. This depends on typist and keyboard; I use Swedish/Finnish keyboard and touch-type, and hitting j four times happens without looking or thinking. Hitting } requires me to lift my right hand from typing position, hold Alt-Gr, press 0, and then go back to typing position.

4j takes half the keystrokes of jjjj, no matter which keyboard layout you're using :)

Re: Ask HN: What is so great about Bloomberg Terminal?

#155

Post by uptown »

I think it has very little to do with the end-user hardware, and everything to do with their data. Bloomberg is dominant in data quality. Really, whatever financial information you want, you can get, provided you're willing and able to pay the price.

Their data is faster and cleaner than most of their competition. Personally, I find their interface clunky by today's standards, but it's entrenched in the industry, so there's a non-trivial learning "cost" for anyone considering switching away, and even if they're able to adapt to a new interface, they're likely to find holes in the available data. Beyond their data, they connect the financial industry over Bloomberg chat, so it's got the network effect there. The hardware itself is not a huge factor IMO. Plenty of people use Bloomberg terminals, via Bloomberg Anywhere, logging in from their standard desktop with their normal Windows keyboards.

Re: Ask HN: What is so great about Bloomberg Terminal?

#156

Post by jwatte »

reitanqild wrote: post #111
cm2012 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not sold, so not comparable to BB.

Evil mode: That's not sold No, given freely away for "protection". Evil mode off: I have less problems with western TLAs as they exist today but find it very scary to think about what might happen once we see a really big data leak from FB. Or Facebook folds and is bought by someone who's set on making money from the assets.

Facebook is in the business of making money off the assets. The thing that keeps them off the worst edge is that they want to stay in business long term.

Re: Ask HN: What is so great about Bloomberg Terminal?

#157

Post by ptaipale »

krallja wrote: post #151
ptaipale wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This particular example makes assumptions: that hitting j four times is worse than entering } once. This depends on typist and keyboard; I use Swedish/Finnish keyboard and touch-type, and hitting j four times happens without looking or thinking. Hitting } requires me to lift my right hand from typing position, hold Alt-Gr, press 0, and then go back to typing position.

4j takes half the keystrokes of jjjj, no matter which keyboard layout you're using :)

Yes, but j is where my right index finger sits in the basic typing position, so hitting j four times is still better...

Re: Ask HN: What is so great about Bloomberg Terminal?

#158

Post by FabHK »

nommm-nommm wrote: post #145
FabHK wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, error scrubbing. There's lots of financial data available on yahoo, for example, but it's just lousy quality.

Can you give an example? Not that I don't believe you.

Ok, look at the Thai Baht exchange rate:

http://finance.yahoo.com/quote/THB=X/?p=THB=X

You see the graph on the right, it hovers around 30 USD/THB (that's 30 THB per USD, in somewhat confusing FX convention).

Now click on 5Y, then click on 10Y, and compare. The 10Y graphs probably includes some wrong blip around 700, which is why the 10Y graph scale is from 0 to 750, and you just see a basically flat line displayed at the bottom.

(The 10Y PHP graph is fine, while the 10Y INR graph has a similar issue).

So, if you do any trading strategy where you're trying to figure out whether your current value is relatively high or low by comparing it to the 10Y max and min, you'll most likely be off.

Or consider equity, for example. To properly deal with shares, you first need the trading calendar for every exchange (when is the exchange open and you can make a trade), and the settlement calendar (when will the shares actually be settled). US settlement is typically T+3, Europe T+2, UK Gilts T+1, but all according to certain calendars, naturally. These calendars vary by country, and even exchange and even function (in other words, there might be days when shares at a certain exchange trade, but don't settle, and vice versa).

Bloomberg has all these details - good luck finding it on Yahoo or anywhere else, really.

Re: Ask HN: What is so great about Bloomberg Terminal?

#159

Post by dirtbox »

gaius wrote: post #56
danpalmer wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand? Are identities checked and referenced, or enforced socially like on LinkedIn? When you say things are effectively contracts, I've heard about the very solid principles that some finance people work to - "if we said it then we will stand by it" sort of things - or does Bloomberg step in to arbitrate, or are chats accessible by the employing companies, how are contracts enforced?

They are "checked" in the sense that ultimately there's a name associated with that expensive login. All chats are logged and available to compliance, regulators, etc. Bloomberg won't arbitrate but they don't have to - everyone knows that if you welshed on a deal, no-one would ever deal with you again. This is the same way that voice calls in banks work too.

I'm amazed this hasn't been exploited.

Re: Ask HN: What is so great about Bloomberg Terminal?

#160

Post by ptaipale »

emondi wrote: post #149
ptaipale wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This particular example makes assumptions: that hitting j four times is worse than entering } once. This depends on typist and keyboard; I use Swedish/Finnish keyboard and touch-type, and hitting j four times happens without looking or thinking. Hitting } requires me to lift my right hand from typing position, hold Alt-Gr, press 0, and then go back to typing position.

Every major programming language uses english keyboard. I'm a starter amateur coder but first thing I did was learn the en-us keyboard layout. There are options to use Alt-Gr accented letters for spanish which I use but also for combining letters which should work for finnish/swedish.

Programming languages don't use keyboards; they use some sets of characters, typically a subset of ASCII. Keyboards then can produce those characters.

And yes, typing [\]{|} and so on is inconvenient on my keyboard. I particularly detest the choice of \ over / in MSDOS and Windows path names.

I occasionally use US keyboard layout just to get around these difficulties, but whenever I arrive at some random computer, it will have the local layout.

(This is particularly confusing when going to France or Germany with they AZERTY and QWERTZ keyboards.)

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