This is the third time I've watched this video (admittedly with a bit of distraction today). After the first time I went off and learned about modular implicits, which appear to be a huge ergonomic improvement, especially the way the JaneStreet library APIs are designed. The second and third times I got increasingly sad that so much brain power is being sucked up by algebraic effects, to the detriment of other advancements. Oh well, that's their decision to make; JaneStreet continues to do huge service to OCaml in myriad ways, and I really value these tech talk videos as part of that.
Jane Street and the OCaml Compiler (2018) [video]
51–60 of 119 posts
Re: Jane Street and the OCaml Compiler (2018) [video]
#52i asked this question at my Jane Street interview, but never got a real answer: how does a market making latency arb firm handle GC pauses that are inherent with any GC language? OCaml is better in this regard than, say, the JVM, but it still seems problematic. I know they wrote some FPGA compiler stuff with OCaml, but I can't imagine that all of their execution is running through FPGAs. Even if it's possible, it see…
If you don't allocate, you won't garbage collect. GC pauses would be really bad, but you can avoid them, or at least avoid them happening at bad times, if you're careful. It does requires knowing in some detail how Ocaml manages memory.
Re: Jane Street and the OCaml Compiler (2018) [video]
#53Seems to me that firms like two sigma and jane street form some sense of "mystique" about them with regards to how elite their developers are. But once you get inside, most people are writing run of the mill software. Google has the same tactic, even paying below market rates to people willing to work their for the brand. Jane Street does pay very well, but still, most of their hiring is based off of prestigious coll…
Not JS, but I've worked for a couple of competitors and can confirm. There were a few truly brilliant individuals, but most of the staff was unexceptional, and the general level of the tech varied between standard corporate and outright appalling. It turns out that if you have enough money, you can simply keep throwing programmers into the firefight until something sort of works. They're truly too rich to fail.
But, not an enjoyable ride if you actually love quality tech.
(But, money! So much money!!)
Re: Jane Street and the OCaml Compiler (2018) [video]
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
With so much money on the line, hedge funds and other trading firms focus a lot of effort on marketing and building up a perception that they truly are something special (at least those that take outside client money). Internally, things could be rather mundane, and even downright awful (from a technology perspective). Not commenting on Jane Street in particular, just the industry in general. Source: I've worked at a…
Is the sausage made in VBA?
In some shops, yes.
Re: Jane Street and the OCaml Compiler (2018) [video]
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's strange to me that you seem to assume higher taxes on top earners (which is probably the conclusion I parse out of Sanders and his proponents, though they would face opposition in Congress to get there) necessarily means that economic growth will decline. Speaking historically, the United States has gone through periods of high growth with top marginal tax rates at something like 90%.
Higher taxes are not the only economics implications of a Sanders presidency, especially when you look at some of the governments Sanders has praised over his career. A better tax structure is necessary and the easiest thing to do, but I don't trust Sanders to figure that out. Even Warren comes up with a wealth tax instead of just fixing the income and capital gains tax brackets. Hint: add three more brackets with 4m…
Sanders proposes a wealth tax as well. Not knowing that, coupled with ludicrous fears about him “seizing the means of production”, strongly indicates a questionable origin for your impression of Sanders.
The same thing goes for governments that he’s praised, a completely manufactured controversy. It is not condoning authoritarianism to say, for example, that China outperforms the US in infrastructure. People get hysterical about insufficient condemnation of the Cuban regime; I wonder how many are even aware of the murderous right-wing military dictatorship that the US installed and the communists replaced. It’s a very similar situation with respect to Nicaragua. Somehow the outrage about authoritarianism is missing as long as the US is directly profiting from the oppression. See Saudi Arabia vs Iran.
Re: Jane Street and the OCaml Compiler (2018) [video]
#56Seems to me that firms like two sigma and jane street form some sense of "mystique" about them with regards to how elite their developers are. But once you get inside, most people are writing run of the mill software. Google has the same tactic, even paying below market rates to people willing to work their for the brand. Jane Street does pay very well, but still, most of their hiring is based off of prestigious coll…
With so much money on the line, hedge funds and other trading firms focus a lot of effort on marketing and building up a perception that they truly are something special (at least those that take outside client money). Internally, things could be rather mundane, and even downright awful (from a technology perspective). Not commenting on Jane Street in particular, just the industry in general. Source: I've worked at a…
>Internally, things could be rather mundane
Elite developers often make things mundane. No fires. No explosions. etc.
Re: Jane Street and the OCaml Compiler (2018) [video]
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
With so much money on the line, hedge funds and other trading firms focus a lot of effort on marketing and building up a perception that they truly are something special (at least those that take outside client money). Internally, things could be rather mundane, and even downright awful (from a technology perspective). Not commenting on Jane Street in particular, just the industry in general. Source: I've worked at a…
FWIW, Jane Street is not a hedge fund nor take outside client money. (Edit: I work at Jane Street.)
How would you best describe them
Re: Jane Street and the OCaml Compiler (2018) [video]
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why C++ now but not then, 20+ years ago? And would F# be suitable for the task? Im genuinely interested
Everything in the C++ ecosystem is better now than it was 20 years go. The language, the tools, the libraries, the build systems. It's actually fairly pleasant to work in these days.
Everything in almost every ecosystem is better than it was 20 yrs ago. Even Common lisp is evolving... even c++ is almost, aaaaalmost has a package manager :-)
Re: Jane Street and the OCaml Compiler (2018) [video]
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
FWIW, Jane Street is not a hedge fund nor take outside client money. (Edit: I work at Jane Street.)
How would you best describe them
It's a prop trading firm. It's pretty important to distinguish between hedge funds that take public money (which are generally probably low quality, as the OP described) and prop trading firms that only or primarily trade their own money (Two Sigma, Renaissance, Jane Street, Jump trading, etc.). The latter deserve their mystique, because you only trade your own money if you are actually beating the market.
Re: Jane Street and the OCaml Compiler (2018) [video]
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
With so much money on the line, hedge funds and other trading firms focus a lot of effort on marketing and building up a perception that they truly are something special (at least those that take outside client money). Internally, things could be rather mundane, and even downright awful (from a technology perspective). Not commenting on Jane Street in particular, just the industry in general. Source: I've worked at a…
Yeah worked in the industry as well, there's a story an older buddy used to tell when he worked at PIMCO in the 90s. Bit different than a quant fund but still applies. They hired a few Harvard Economics PhDs, who when looking at their macro economics material for institutional investors, claimed it was all wrong/didn't make sense. Bill Gross, the fund manager, told them it was to "get the money in the door from the f…
>Harvard Economics PhDs
tbf, academia is its own racket.