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Bloomberg runs on 25 million lines of Fortran... https://etrading.wordpress.com/2006/06/01/25-million-lines-of-fortran/ https://etrading.wordpress.com/2006/06/

Bloomberg runs on 25 million lines of Fortran... https://etrading.wordpress.com/2006/06/01/25-million-lines-of-fortran/ https://etrading.wordpress.com/2006/06/01/25-million-lines-o... The NY Times is right to point out that it's the range of offerings in Bloomberg that make it so hard to dislodge: news, dealer quotes, market data, reference data, historical data, email & chat, charting etc. There are many firms tackling parts of that puzzle, but nobody attempting to do it all. Bloomberg is a classic platform business; with such strong demand from one constituency - traders renting terminals - that it can afford to treat other platform clients with disdain. When I worked for a dealer contributing quotes to BBG I found them incredibly difficult to work with.

humanrebar 11y ago
"June 1, 2006"
- osullivj 11y ago
  The BBG UI certainly hasn't changed since then. They bought in John Lakos (https://www.linkedin.com/pub/john-lakos/4/117/888 https://www.linkedin.com/pub/john-lakos/4/117/888), the "Large Scale C++" author to help them make the jump to C++ in 2001 and linkedin says he's still there. Given they have a winning business model, and the forces of inertia being what they are, I'm betting nothing's changed...
  - eli 11y ago
    The UI looks archaic but I wouldn't presume that says anything about how it works under the hood. There are other forces at work on the UI. See e.g. https://uxmag.com/articles/the-impossible-bloomberg-makeover https://uxmag.com/articles/the-impossible-bloomberg-makeover
    - apaprocki 11y ago
      The UI and the technology it is built on have changed drastically since a decade ago, but not all changes are cosmetic. Changes to the core UX have to happen gradually and evolve with users because, as you know, this is an actual real product used 24/7 and you can't just change everything out from most users on a Friday when they come back into work the following Monday. I'm not going to say much about that linked article -- just that it is almost complete nonsense and wish it would stop being brought up whenever the software is mentioned.
      - eli 11y ago
        Yes, I think we're saying the same thing. And I didn't realize that was a frequently cited article.

humanrebar 11y ago

"June 1, 2006"

osullivj 11y ago
The BBG UI certainly hasn't changed since then. They bought in John Lakos (https://www.linkedin.com/pub/john-lakos/4/117/888 https://www.linkedin.com/pub/john-lakos/4/117/888), the "Large Scale C++" author to help them make the jump to C++ in 2001 and linkedin says he's still there. Given they have a winning business model, and the forces of inertia being what they are, I'm betting nothing's changed...
- eli 11y ago
  The UI looks archaic but I wouldn't presume that says anything about how it works under the hood. There are other forces at work on the UI. See e.g. https://uxmag.com/articles/the-impossible-bloomberg-makeover https://uxmag.com/articles/the-impossible-bloomberg-makeover
  - apaprocki 11y ago
    The UI and the technology it is built on have changed drastically since a decade ago, but not all changes are cosmetic. Changes to the core UX have to happen gradually and evolve with users because, as you know, this is an actual real product used 24/7 and you can't just change everything out from most users on a Friday when they come back into work the following Monday. I'm not going to say much about that linked article -- just that it is almost complete nonsense and wish it would stop being brought up whenever the software is mentioned.
    - eli 11y ago
      Yes, I think we're saying the same thing. And I didn't realize that was a frequently cited article.