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Hello,
I'm interested in getting into the development of backtesting strategies and automated trading.
I have some experience in coding and while doing my research I isolated 2 languages I might use for my trading: Easylanguage and C#.
I read that Easylanguage is "limited" compared to C# but the claimers never explained in what it is limited.
So to specialists of Easylanguage... what are the limitations you hit if any?
For example, can you have the equivalent of "break", or "continue" statements in EL loops?
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
most of the times you are able to walk around limitations within EasyLanguage and you could extend the capabilities via external DLLs. Besides that I find platform limitations (in any platform) to be the limiting factor most of the time, but Tradestation has improved there a lot since Object Oriented EasyLanguage was introduced.
The question is tricky because everything has it's advantages and disadvantages. All in all EL/PL or AFL are both a good choice when you're starting out as a trader - much better than C# unless you already have 8-10+ years of experience in C#.
I've developed everything from complex monitoring systems to automated minimum variance optimization for portfolios of systems to slippage analysis and execution control systems to automated montecarlo and risk management systems to data mining algorithms in EasyLanguage. Everything is possible.
The limitations of EL are not actually in the language - it's in the platforms supporting it. EL is an amazing tool for learning, but eventually my biggest problem is, when you have a very large portfolio of systems you want to trade, the platforms and the automated trading functions get a little clunky, slow, need a lot of memory, etc. Backtests on a large amount of data also take time (unlike AFL - except that tool is not made for live trading).
But as for the language itself: You can do almost anything in EL that you want, and the pre-written functions, charting systems, etc., will save you 99% of the hassle and learning curve you'd get with C# or any other "proper" programming language.
What you're going to notice, is that EL doesn't have good compiler/debugging support in either of the platforms that support it. Many people I know, including myself, use tools like the sharedvar server to expand this functionality to be able to debug subtle mistakes faster, and make development a little more fluent.
My recommendation is: learn EL and learn AFL. As you move forward, program everything in both so you don't get stuck with a specific platform, and you can use every tool for what it's best for (AFL for backtests, EL for execution and reporting, for example).
Later, when you are trading a really large account, you can always hire the right C++ people to convert your execution, while you keep doing your quantitative analysis in EL/AFL.
I'm sorry, I meant Amibroker's language. Reasonably similar to EL, but it's an amazing tool. From what I understand (not an expert in compilers), the language translates straight to assembler, cutting out the OS. You never have to wait for a backtest in Amibroker. Plus, it's a really efficient habit to always code something you develop in one platform to another to make sure you're not looking at a strategy that would be you tricking yourself with some unique "feature" in the platform.
[I'm not affiliated with Amibroker in any way - could be anything else, just, second after EasyLanguage/Powerlanguage, Amibroker is probably the best and easiest tool that I have personally found for my own taste]
