4 ms·
I've looked at Slang a bit. It's an interpreted dataflow language running on an in-memory database called SecDB. Untyped, Pascal-ish, single-threaded, and poor
by silverlake 16y ago
I've looked at Slang a bit. It's an interpreted dataflow language running on an in-memory database called SecDB. Untyped, Pascal-ish, single-threaded, and poor support for namespaces. Like a spreadsheet, it only needs to recompute the subgraph that has changed. It was probably innovative 25 years ago (I think it came out mid-80s), but today you could write Java code and use memoization aggressively to speed things up. Slang is not why GS traders are successful. AFAIK, GS succeeds because they listen to their risk people.
- hga 16y agoBy embedding so much info company wide in SecDB aren't their risk people in a better position to make their case? Still, that wouldn't matter if GS wasn't inclined to listen to them, but the whole Slang/SecDB system is indicative of a company culture that's serious about these sorts of things.
- lvecsey 16y agoDidn't GS have a losing second quarter? Perhaps this spin-off has more to do with how they perceive the next quarter is going too, and worries about business beyond that.
- retube 16y ago"Like a spreadsheet, it only needs to recompute the subgraph that has changed." Yes that's right - and that is a key feature for GS - they need to be able to revalue huge trading books ~ real time. (Most other banks estimate impact of intraday moves, and do a re-price overnight in batch)
- pasbesoin 16y agoA former GS pricing quant describes Slang briefly in a footnote at the following URL. It doesn't go into much detail, but maybe adds a morsel to what's been mentioned: http://adgrok.com/why-founding-a-three-person-startup-with-zero-revenue-is-better-than-working-for-goldman-sachs#footnote_4_195 http://adgrok.com/why-founding-a-three-person-startup-with-z...