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Robinhood trading site seizes up, customers miss stock rally

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Re: Robinhood trading site seizes up, customers miss stock rally

#42

I checked one of their backend engineering job postings, using Python and Go... mostly python? Probably should have chosen something ~~boring~~ safe, like Java. A dynamic language like python/ruby doesn't seem to be a good choice for critical financial applications. I'm know it can be done in python, but its about curbing any potential for human errors. Interested in seeing the RCA for this.

Python is pretty boring, quite honestly, and it's as old as Java (4 years older than publicly-available Java). There are a variety of compelling engineering reasons to choose Java over Python, but a lack of boring conservatism is not one of them.

Re: Robinhood trading site seizes up, customers miss stock rally

#43
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rigorous, non-optional type checking isn't such a bad idea for high reliability.

Counterpoint: Erlang. Also, if "rigorous, non-optional" is good, why would you want _Java_ and not, I dunno, Haskell or ML or some other powerful type system? Is there any evidence this bug would have been prevented in Java? If anything, Java is prime ground for the related YYYY vs yyyy formatter bug.

Hiring pool for Java is orders of magnitude larger, let's not pretend this isn't an issue with esoteric languages like Haskell

Re: Robinhood trading site seizes up, customers miss stock rally

#44
post #35

I saw a tweet that showed they didn't 'account for' leap years.. And by account for I mean: use a standard date library to handle dates. I too have made this mistake when younger and tried to be smart with dates, but not on a f'ing multi million dollar service >_<

Could you stop spreading a hoax.....

>A hoax is a falsehood deliberately fabricated to masquerade as the truth

Perse probably didn't know it was a hoax.

Re: Robinhood trading site seizes up, customers miss stock rally

#45
post #34
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Static typing makes it easier to discover errors before the code is running in production.

Perhaps, but how does static typing make a language 'boring' or dynamic typing 'exciting'. I certainly consider Elm and Haskell more 'exciting' than Python or PHP.

replace boring with safe. you get the point.

Re: Robinhood trading site seizes up, customers miss stock rally

#46
post #32

I saw a tweet that showed they didn't 'account for' leap years.. And by account for I mean: use a standard date library to handle dates. I too have made this mistake when younger and tried to be smart with dates, but not on a f'ing multi million dollar service >_<

They said this isn't the case - https://twitter.com/AskRobinhood/status/1234861941413351434?...

According to https://www.reddit.com/r/RobinHood/comments/48mep4/robinhood... Robinhood went down 4 years ago, off by one day, to the date.

Hard to take that reply seriously.

Re: Robinhood trading site seizes up, customers miss stock rally

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most major discount brokerages are also at $0 commissions. They make their money off of net interest, asset management fees, margin, security lending arrangements, and order flow.

Well, it looks like they make money mostly through a product that doesn't work literally you need it most, but sure.

Robinhood is not a major discount brokerage.

Re: Robinhood trading site seizes up, customers miss stock rally

#49

I'm not a Robinhood user -- do they have guaranteed stop losses? This is something that could appease lots of users (assuming it's used correctly) even in this kind of situation (since _guaranteed_ stop losses exist pretty much for exactly this eventuality).

The only guarantees on Robinhood is to the hedge funds they sell their order book to (i.e. actual customers) that the counterparty is dumb money.

Re: Robinhood trading site seizes up, customers miss stock rally

#50

I checked one of their backend engineering job postings, using Python and Go... mostly python? Probably should have chosen something ~~boring~~ safe, like Java. A dynamic language like python/ruby doesn't seem to be a good choice for critical financial applications. I'm know it can be done in python, but its about curbing any potential for human errors. Interested in seeing the RCA for this.

Python is pretty boring, quite honestly, and it's as old as Java (4 years older than publicly-available Java). There are a variety of compelling engineering reasons to choose Java over Python, but a lack of boring conservatism is not one of them.

you're right. wrong word. changed to "safe", which would also include OCaml, Haskel, C#/F#, etc.
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