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I have the utmost respect for Patrick and the team - and just read the same thing via mail. But - as someone that _loved_ Microcorruption and followed StarFigh

I have the utmost respect for Patrick and the team - and just read the same thing via mail. But - as someone that _loved_ Microcorruption and followed StarFighter from day one, stalking the people on Twitter as to not miss the launch: That's not for me. The game right now - as this article, this mail shows - requires you to learn about finance systems before you even start playing the game. It's a game where the rule book is - from this pov - too long and already uninteresting. Good luck, I'll sit this one out and would love to see a future expansion in different directions. Or another Microcorruption, Stripe CTF etc.

MichaelGG 11y ago
Interesting. I'm the opposite. I was sorta curious, so I started reading Flash Boys. It became immediately obvious that A: the author is fucking clueless, and B: I didn't know enough about how this system worked. The book called "Dark Pools" was a bit better (mainly as a light history of electronic trading). "Flash Boys: Not So Fast" was really fun, mainly because it systematically trashes the author of Flash Boys. It was interesting enough that I've picked up a few books on market microstructure, that really get into the details. It's fascinating, not just technically, but from a standpoint of looking at humans. It's odd to see how such strange systems persisted for so long (like Patrick mentions in this post, the crazy 1/8th spreads that were gamed). Or in "Dark Pools", they discuss how some of these traders would call up Nasdaq wondering why a certain trade did or didn't work how it did. And they'd find out all sorts of strange rules. Which makes me wonder, wtf? Are Nasdaq's rules hidden? Or were people doing this as a living just too lazy to read the specs? [1] I can only guess how much easy money there was to be made 20 years ago. I'm so looking forward to Stockfighter, enough that I started looking at FIX and OUCH (OUCH looks far faster since there's ~no silly parsing - just copy into a struct) just in case that's what they offered. It's too late for me to actually work in finance (far smarter people with more experience in math and compsci), but playing the game is still an option. (I've actually been thinking of how we might run some fake exchanges, federated, as a game.) Anyways, I guess to each his own. But I'm guessing I'm not the only one that will find this scenario intriguing. 1: Even basic stuff, like market orders, are weird. Who the hell would ever submit an order that's literally saying "Sell at any price, including $0"? (Well I suppose now it's "current price minus circuit breaker limits".) Or "buy at any price up to $MAX"? Sure, most of the time it works out fine, but if you can't be bothered to come up with a limit, perhaps you shouldn't be buying or selling?
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > Or were people doing this as a living just too lazy to read the specs? Pretty much every domain I've worked in has stunned me with the number of people who do things for a living without reading the specs (often literally, or understanding the basics in areas where there aren't literal specs.) Both conscious cargo culting (where people know they are doing what they've learned to do from others without understanding the basics, and know what they don't know) and false knowledge (where people do things based on an understanding of the underlying process that is completely wrong, and so don't know what they don't know) are distressingly common. And just to be clear, I don't hold myself to be superior in anyway. I avoid conscious cargo culting except when there is no practical choice; but I've certainly ran into places where I discovered I had been operating for a long time on false knowledge when good sources existed to correct that, but I didn't know that I had a gap that needed correcting.
  - kbenson 11y ago
    When you've been treading water for so long just trying not to drown, it can be hard to focus on better swimming techniques when you get a moment of respite. Eventually, you can get into such a rhythm of almost drowning and recovering, that it can be hard to imagine anything else until you see it. Finally catching a glimpse of your neighbor who happens to just be merrily floating on his back can be revelatory.
- radnor 11y ago
  > Even basic stuff, like market orders, are weird. Who the hell would ever submit an order that's literally saying "Sell at any price, including $0"? (Well I suppose now it's "current price minus circuit breaker limits".) Or "buy at any price up to $MAX"? In MMORPG games, those kinds of orders on the auction houses are awesome because they mean someone wasn't paying attention. Profit for the person who finds them! :)
  - eru 11y ago
    If enough people look for them and compete, the poor sucker won't be out of so much money.
danielvf 11y ago
Almost every fun project I've worked on required me to learn something new. Heck, the last level of the Stripe CTF3 required me to learn how to fake a distributed fault tolerant SQL database!
patio11 11y ago
I respect your opinion on this, but you might enjoy the tech tree which I keep describing as "low-level programming", which is what Erin and Thomas have been killing themselves over for the last several weeks. I haven't written about it much because, frankly, that's not my bag just like finance isn't your bag. (Granted, finance isn't my bag either, but I find myself warming to it after scratch-coding a stock exchange.) Thomas describes that tech tree as "MicroCorruption the way we would have done it if we had dialed it to 11." Sneak peak: https://www.evernote.com/l/AaedYkVFsB1Oa4eDakZay59-YF7Lu0mcJJIB/image.png https://www.evernote.com/l/AaedYkVFsB1Oa4eDakZay59-YF7Lu0mcJ... (I don't have a good screenshot of it at present because they're currently doing UI surgery on the React 0.14 upgrade.)
- NerdBuddha 11y ago
  Rolls-Royce manufactures awesome cars that I will never buy. Let me tell you something they are not worried at all. It's ok not to be for everybody :D Keep it up Patrick.-
- irln 11y ago
  Hi Patrick, Will part of the game be writing the components of the exchange (order book, matching engine, etc.)?
  - BWStearns 11y ago
    A previous post suggested that some challenges would be reasonably solved by replicating a local implementation of the order book.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
aesthetics1 11y ago
I'm with you on this one. When I first heard about this and signed up for the newsletter, I was genuinely excited. However, the more I hear about it, the more disinterested I am.
tptacek 11y ago
These are Patrick's levels. I'm writing up Erin & my levels now. If you liked Microcorruption, well... Here's, like, I don't know, a taste, or whatever: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8l2d814o1cuiumv/Screenshot%202015-10-30%2016.39.47.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/8l2d814o1cuiumv/Screenshot%202015-...
jackgavigan 11y ago
> The game right now - as this article, this mail shows - requires you to learn about finance systems before you even start playing the game. It's a game where the rule book is - from this pov - too long and already uninteresting. Given that Starfighter's business model seems to be helping filter programming talent for recruiters, filtering out developers who aren't interested in programming financial systems is a good first step. My day job involves understanding the finance "rule book" and translating part of it into something that developers can understand and build to. But, even with my translation, the developers still need to be capable of understanding a certain amount about the "rule book" so they can delivery code/functionality that actually fulfils the requirements. If a developer isn't interested in (or capable of) doing that, they're not going to be of interest to someone who's looking to recruit developers to work on finance systems.
- tptacek 11y ago
  That is not our business model. We are recruiters (or at least: we plan to figure out how to be). We do not provide information to outside recruiters or hiring managers.
  - jackgavigan 11y ago
    Aren't you using the CTFs you run as a way of filtering out the best talent? We intend to get in touch with very talented players. We’ll be interested in talking about the game, about what you’ve built, and about what you want to do in the future. If your future goals include “Get a better job!”, we can help make that happen. If not, no worries. We have agreements with a small number of companies to find qualified engineers and introduce them to the companies. These clients pay us for introductions which result in placements.
    - kbenson 11y ago
      He didn't dispute that, just that their model does not entail sharing your information. They aren't planning to be middle-men to recruiters, but to be a specialized form of recruiters themselves.

MichaelGG 11y ago

Interesting. I'm the opposite. I was sorta curious, so I started reading Flash Boys. It became immediately obvious that A: the author is fucking clueless, and B: I didn't know enough about how this system worked. The book called "Dark Pools" was a bit better (mainly as a light history of electronic trading). "Flash Boys: Not So Fast" was really fun, mainly because it systematically trashes the author of Flash Boys. It was interesting enough that I've picked up a few books on market microstructure, that really get into the details. It's fascinating, not just technically, but from a standpoint of looking at humans. It's odd to see how such strange systems persisted for so long (like Patrick mentions in this post, the crazy 1/8th spreads that were gamed). Or in "Dark Pools", they discuss how some of these traders would call up Nasdaq wondering why a certain trade did or didn't work how it did. And they'd find out all sorts of strange rules. Which makes me wonder, wtf? Are Nasdaq's rules hidden? Or were people doing this as a living just too lazy to read the specs? [1] I can only guess how much easy money there was to be made 20 years ago. I'm so looking forward to Stockfighter, enough that I started looking at FIX and OUCH (OUCH looks far faster since there's ~no silly parsing - just copy into a struct) just in case that's what they offered. It's too late for me to actually work in finance (far smarter people with more experience in math and compsci), but playing the game is still an option. (I've actually been thinking of how we might run some fake exchanges, federated, as a game.) Anyways, I guess to each his own. But I'm guessing I'm not the only one that will find this scenario intriguing. 1: Even basic stuff, like market orders, are weird. Who the hell would ever submit an order that's literally saying "Sell at any price, including $0"? (Well I suppose now it's "current price minus circuit breaker limits".) Or "buy at any price up to $MAX"? Sure, most of the time it works out fine, but if you can't be bothered to come up with a limit, perhaps you shouldn't be buying or selling?

dragonwriter 11y ago
> Or were people doing this as a living just too lazy to read the specs? Pretty much every domain I've worked in has stunned me with the number of people who do things for a living without reading the specs (often literally, or understanding the basics in areas where there aren't literal specs.) Both conscious cargo culting (where people know they are doing what they've learned to do from others without understanding the basics, and know what they don't know) and false knowledge (where people do things based on an understanding of the underlying process that is completely wrong, and so don't know what they don't know) are distressingly common. And just to be clear, I don't hold myself to be superior in anyway. I avoid conscious cargo culting except when there is no practical choice; but I've certainly ran into places where I discovered I had been operating for a long time on false knowledge when good sources existed to correct that, but I didn't know that I had a gap that needed correcting.
- kbenson 11y ago
  When you've been treading water for so long just trying not to drown, it can be hard to focus on better swimming techniques when you get a moment of respite. Eventually, you can get into such a rhythm of almost drowning and recovering, that it can be hard to imagine anything else until you see it. Finally catching a glimpse of your neighbor who happens to just be merrily floating on his back can be revelatory.
radnor 11y ago
> Even basic stuff, like market orders, are weird. Who the hell would ever submit an order that's literally saying "Sell at any price, including $0"? (Well I suppose now it's "current price minus circuit breaker limits".) Or "buy at any price up to $MAX"? In MMORPG games, those kinds of orders on the auction houses are awesome because they mean someone wasn't paying attention. Profit for the person who finds them! :)
- eru 11y ago
  If enough people look for them and compete, the poor sucker won't be out of so much money.

danielvf 11y ago

Almost every fun project I've worked on required me to learn something new. Heck, the last level of the Stripe CTF3 required me to learn how to fake a distributed fault tolerant SQL database!

patio11 11y ago

I respect your opinion on this, but you might enjoy the tech tree which I keep describing as "low-level programming", which is what Erin and Thomas have been killing themselves over for the last several weeks. I haven't written about it much because, frankly, that's not my bag just like finance isn't your bag. (Granted, finance isn't my bag either, but I find myself warming to it after scratch-coding a stock exchange.) Thomas describes that tech tree as "MicroCorruption the way we would have done it if we had dialed it to 11." Sneak peak: https://www.evernote.com/l/AaedYkVFsB1Oa4eDakZay59-YF7Lu0mcJJIB/image.png https://www.evernote.com/l/AaedYkVFsB1Oa4eDakZay59-YF7Lu0mcJ... (I don't have a good screenshot of it at present because they're currently doing UI surgery on the React 0.14 upgrade.)

NerdBuddha 11y ago
Rolls-Royce manufactures awesome cars that I will never buy. Let me tell you something they are not worried at all. It's ok not to be for everybody :D Keep it up Patrick.-
irln 11y ago
Hi Patrick, Will part of the game be writing the components of the exchange (order book, matching engine, etc.)?
- BWStearns 11y ago
  A previous post suggested that some challenges would be reasonably solved by replicating a local implementation of the order book.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

aesthetics1 11y ago

I'm with you on this one. When I first heard about this and signed up for the newsletter, I was genuinely excited. However, the more I hear about it, the more disinterested I am.

tptacek 11y ago

These are Patrick's levels. I'm writing up Erin & my levels now. If you liked Microcorruption, well... Here's, like, I don't know, a taste, or whatever: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8l2d814o1cuiumv/Screenshot%202015-10-30%2016.39.47.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/8l2d814o1cuiumv/Screenshot%202015-...

jackgavigan 11y ago

> The game right now - as this article, this mail shows - requires you to learn about finance systems before you even start playing the game. It's a game where the rule book is - from this pov - too long and already uninteresting. Given that Starfighter's business model seems to be helping filter programming talent for recruiters, filtering out developers who aren't interested in programming financial systems is a good first step. My day job involves understanding the finance "rule book" and translating part of it into something that developers can understand and build to. But, even with my translation, the developers still need to be capable of understanding a certain amount about the "rule book" so they can delivery code/functionality that actually fulfils the requirements. If a developer isn't interested in (or capable of) doing that, they're not going to be of interest to someone who's looking to recruit developers to work on finance systems.

tptacek 11y ago
That is not our business model. We are recruiters (or at least: we plan to figure out how to be). We do not provide information to outside recruiters or hiring managers.
- jackgavigan 11y ago
  Aren't you using the CTFs you run as a way of filtering out the best talent? We intend to get in touch with very talented players. We’ll be interested in talking about the game, about what you’ve built, and about what you want to do in the future. If your future goals include “Get a better job!”, we can help make that happen. If not, no worries. We have agreements with a small number of companies to find qualified engineers and introduce them to the companies. These clients pay us for introductions which result in placements.
  - kbenson 11y ago
    He didn't dispute that, just that their model does not entail sharing your information. They aren't planning to be middle-men to recruiters, but to be a specialized form of recruiters themselves.