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In Flash Boys, Michael Lewis explored why so many of the programmers for High Frequency Trading firms were Russian. The conclusion he reached was that in the f
by gringoDan 8y ago
In Flash Boys, Michael Lewis explored why so many of the programmers for High Frequency Trading firms were Russian.
The conclusion he reached was that in the former USSR, people studying CS only were allowed about 15 minutes of computer time per week at universities. They had to write their code by hand and make it as elegant and bug-free as possible long before actually running it. Learning in this way lent itself to writing highly efficient code in an industry that rewarded whoever could execute trades the fastest.
Disclaimer that this is highly anecdotal and I haven't read the book in a while so I may have some details wrong, but I thought the story was entertaining.
- zhte415 8y agoI remembered the same quote. Also, in the book, I found the story of how Java came to dominate fields in finance, covered in the first half of the book, very interesting.
- vram22 8y ago>the story of how Java came to dominate fields in finance Can you briefly summarize the reasons for that (the Java part)?
- zhte415 8y agoSorry, wrong book. Read both in succession. (Partial) History of Java in finance is covered in Dark Pools by Scott Patterson. Reason was from snowball effect starting very small with a lot of altruistic one finance/tech person helping out another in a different firm. I'm not sure I'm going to that justice in a short comment, so simply recommend getting the book.
- vram22 8y agoThanks for the info.