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Goldman's traders use a proprietary programming language called "Slang"

cnbc.com

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Re: Goldman's traders use a proprietary programming language called "Slang"

#21

Post by azim »

jbooth wrote: post #13
jrockway wrote: post #7

At initial stages, potential recruits are not even told that Goldman is the client. Well, yeah. That's because if the recruiter tells you where the job is, you'll go directly to the client and keep the 30% of your salary that the recruiter gets to yourself.

Of course, at places like Goldman (in stark contrast to the Cloudera blog post the other week), coming in through a recruiter actually increases your chance of getting the job and a high salary. The recruiter can be the door-banger who pushes your paperwork through the organization and demands a high salary, while you get to be mild-mannered, not desperate for employment, and not a prima donna about money.

I assume the recruiter will take a percentage of the salary as their fee, so it's in their interest to do this.

Re: Goldman's traders use a proprietary programming language called "Slang"

#22

Post by jakarta »

clistctrl wrote: post #20

Unrelated to the story (looking at the stock price) Why would GS be worth $154 a share when they're paying dividends of $.35 a share? Of course I guess the last time Apple paid a dividend was 1995, and they're trading at $259 a share.

When you buy a share you are buying a piece of a business and the future cash flows that it generates.

Looking at a figure like dividends is kind of meaningless. You specifically want to look at the cash flow that is available to owners. That cash flow can be used for different things (buybacks, reinvesting in the business, dividends, etc).

Re: Goldman's traders use a proprietary programming language called "Slang"

#23

Post by gaius »

stuntprogrammer wrote: post #19
gaius wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Morgan Stanley and others were big users of APL, back in the day. Now that's a wacky language!

APL isn't all that weird once you spend a little time with it. It's "just" a dynamically typed collection-oriented language. I think people look at some screenshots, make a stupid joke since they aren't familiar with the notation, and move on rather than digging in. I highly recommend Dyalog's dialect for a comfortable IDE, OO support, .NET support for GUIs on Windows etc. For MS' APL dialect, you can get the whole t…

Yep, I used to work with a bloke from IP Sharp (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I._P._Sharp_Associates#APL_Impl...), he showed me some cool stuff. I have another friend who does q and kdb+ stuff.

Re: Goldman's traders use a proprietary programming language called "Slang"

#24

Post by Nwallins »

endtime wrote: post #18
logicalmind wrote: post #4

I read this article a while back, that said that Microsoft employs more millionaire secretary's that any other company in the world. They took stock options over Christmas bonuses. It was a good move. I remember there was this picture, of one of the groundskeepers next to his Ferrari. Blew my mind. you see shit like that, and it just plants seeds, makes you think its possible, even easy. And then you turn on the TV,…

How is this at all relevant to GS porting their code to a standard programming language?

The punchline is at the end:

> Nobody wants to work for it anymore. There's no honor in taking that after school job at Mickey Dee's, honor's in the dollar, kid. So I went the white boy way of slanging crack-rock: I became a stock broker.

Re: Goldman's traders use a proprietary programming language called "Slang"

#25

Post by logicalmind »

endtime wrote: post #18
logicalmind wrote: post #4

I read this article a while back, that said that Microsoft employs more millionaire secretary's that any other company in the world. They took stock options over Christmas bonuses. It was a good move. I remember there was this picture, of one of the groundskeepers next to his Ferrari. Blew my mind. you see shit like that, and it just plants seeds, makes you think its possible, even easy. And then you turn on the TV,…

How is this at all relevant to GS porting their code to a standard programming language?

I meant it as a tongue-in-cheek reference. The mentality of the character in the movie boiler room gets involved with stock trading because he equates it to the young white male version of "slangin' crack rocks". I found it interesting that stock traders/programmers are literally "slang-in'".

The mentality in the movie also leads one to question the value of what is being created in the world of stock trading. So, to me, the comment had multiple levels of irony and coincidence. But having to explain it makes it lose some of the luster.

Re: Goldman's traders use a proprietary programming language called "Slang"

#26

Post by ivenkys »

hga wrote: post #16
gnuvince wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most likely because they cannot afford to risk that someone will steal the intellectual property of their slow and bug-ridden language implementation.

Well, there's one big advantage to the whole Slang system and that is that it's integrated throughout the company and the system can be used for relatively quick "what if?" and "where do we stand?" queries. Instead of the data being embedded in a zillion (often incorrect) spreadsheets and small databases or whatever that have to be manually scraped, reported and consolidated, it all happens automatically. It may not…

From what i know that was the original intention behind Slang and SecDB. Standardization of use across different departments and in some ways a way to subvert the politics.

Re: Goldman's traders use a proprietary programming language called "Slang"

#27

Post by encoderer »

clistctrl wrote: post #20

Unrelated to the story (looking at the stock price) Why would GS be worth $154 a share when they're paying dividends of $.35 a share? Of course I guess the last time Apple paid a dividend was 1995, and they're trading at $259 a share.

If a company can reinvest profits and grow their marketshare or move into new markets, it's usually in the shareholders interest for them to do so. That reinvestment may eliminate or shrink a dividend payment.

Many large companies are unable to achieve significant growth numbers and in those cases it's usually int he shareholders interest to issue a dividend.

Re: Goldman's traders use a proprietary programming language called "Slang"

#28

Post by madair »

jrockway wrote: post #7

At initial stages, potential recruits are not even told that Goldman is the client. Well, yeah. That's because if the recruiter tells you where the job is, you'll go directly to the client and keep the 30% of your salary that the recruiter gets to yourself.

It's a problem, but more subtle than that, more systemic, because as others have said there is much value in recruiters too. But systemically it's become an international trade in a commodity (programmers). Obviously this is not confined to programmers, but it's a particular flavor of this very large and fluid international business climate.

I think it shifts much long term risk from businesses to the developer, and in addition provides little social and financial stability for the player with the least to start with, and their communities.

Of course, there advantages, not to disparage those, I have benefited from it, recruiters can be pretty damn good at what they do. I just think that the problems outweigh those.

Re: Goldman's traders use a proprietary programming language called "Slang"

#29

Post by ergo98 »

lrm242 wrote: post #12

A relevant thread from Wilmott Forums: http://www.wilmott.com/messageview.cfm?catid=16&threadid... In particular, this quote from Dominic Connor is telling: "...[snip]... As Zmei says [SLang] a GS only language, which even within GS is not exactly universally loved. I hear tales of tragically poor performance, and the inability to cope with modern programming. Think of it as a equivalent to C# 1.0, ie old fashioned.…

C# 1.0? That's really your example of an old fashioned language?

Re: Goldman's traders use a proprietary programming language called "Slang"

#30

Post by nathanwdavis »

It will be interesting to find out what the 'more standard' language that they decide on will be. With the resurgence of new Lisp-like languages, F# (which is already in wide use at Credit Suisse), and other functional types getting a little more mainstream, I wonder if something like that will be chosen over Java, C++ or C#.
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