4 ms·

I'm not sure I understand the adversarial part or why that should matter. He mentioned it being a zero-sum game, with some having to lose for others to win. I

I'm not sure I understand the adversarial part or why that should matter. He mentioned it being a zero-sum game, with some having to lose for others to win. I don't get why that's relevant to the programming language choice. I think what he should have said is that financial transactions are important, and that it's expensive to screw up. This is of course as true or more for, say, NASA's flight software (which is not problem that's not adversarial in the way he means) as it is for financial trading software.

jleader 11y ago
The difference is that if NASA screws up, there's a certain percentage chance that the bug will be exposed, and cause a problem. That percentage usually stays constant over the lifetime of the system, regardless of how many times the bug has already bitten them. In an adversarial situation, there's a percentage chance that the bug will be exposed, and after that a 100% chance that adversaries will exploit it.
- mmsmatt 11y ago
  Pick up "Capital Markets for Quantitative Professionals" - a great resource - and get a taste of this as early as the preface! The author writes about a bug he introduced in a program making markets in treasuries. It cost his firm $30k every trade, and the errant trades piled up as other participants recognized his mistake.