31–40 of 72 posts
"And as a final note, solely for the seriously nerdy techies, there's been some talk about the failure being due to F# error." http://ftalphaville.ft.com/marketslive/
I still don't understand how they choose languages with garbage collection for systems that should be real time or similar.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Via mono. If that's true... that would be an interesting news for the project (not because of the bug itself of course...).
using a immature language (f#) over unproved software stack for an international multi billion dollar low latency transactions when there are dozens of proven highly stable functional alternatives that run well on a linux platform? I can hardly believe it
On the other hand, it has to integrate with lots of enternal trading systems, one of which could easily be written in F#.
The problem is that the LSE can't hire top tier talent. There are plenty of people who are experts in building hugely concurrent and fail-safe exchange software, and they pretty much all work for investment banks. The LSE can't afford to compete with $1000/day salaries so they end up hiring second-tier developers. And unfortunately second-tier developers are a lot lot worse than first-tier developers.
I don't think it's about talent, but more of a problem of proper planning and execution. It seems things had been rushed to meet the tight demands, causing the chaos. When LSE acquired MilleniumIT, to redo the platform, they claimed to have developed world fastest trading platform[1] and had enough talent under their belt developing trading systems around the globe for last decade. [1] http://www.wallstreetandtech.co…
At a bank being great at low-latency can mean tens of millions of dollars of profit for your trading desk and a huge bonus for your personally.
At an exchange being great a low-latency means ... well not much, your exchange gets a bit more flow and you get a pat on the back.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I still don't understand how they choose languages with garbage collection for systems that should be real time or similar.
It's not F# or Java, it's C++. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2261896
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe not if they were using F# on mono. Their PR would have to work very hard to put this in a way that doesn't say "LSE is using our language on a foreign platform using a completely alternative implementation, which has nothing to do with us apart some ECMA specs - and they're still successful without MS involvement. Yes, we just confirmed that you can trust your highly critical .NET environment to the alternative…
They have publicly stated that the system is written in C++ on Suse Linux. http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/open-source/3260727/lond...
"And as a final note, solely for the seriously nerdy techies, there's been some talk about the failure being due to F# error." http://ftalphaville.ft.com/marketslive/
I still don't understand how they choose languages with garbage collection for systems that should be real time or similar.
The problem is that the LSE can't hire top tier talent. There are plenty of people who are experts in building hugely concurrent and fail-safe exchange software, and they pretty much all work for investment banks. The LSE can't afford to compete with $1000/day salaries so they end up hiring second-tier developers. And unfortunately second-tier developers are a lot lot worse than first-tier developers.
What if all these systems were open sourced? Including all the load tests.
LSE considers its software to be a competitive advantage.