3 ms·

Does this same logic apply to, say, a control module in a space craft, or the software behind an MRI machine?

• nialo 16y ago
  Those are orders of magnitude easier to test.
  • CWuestefeld 16y ago
    I'm not sure about that. The testing problems are different, but not harder. An exchange has to deal with massive scale, but isn't hugely complex (relative to a spacecraft, which deals with fault tolerance and integrating many different inputs; or the mathematical complexity of medical imaging). It seems to me that most aspects of scale aren't too difficult to emulate, given sufficient computing resources to generate the load.
• SoftwareMaven 16y ago
  Any time you are dealing with a system with that many users, you are going to introduce a lot of chaos (in its mathematical sense). Chaos is nearly impossible to test for because there are just too many permutations. You are (probably) right that any particular piece of a trading system would be easier to build and test than the examples you gave, but in aggregate, I think it would be much more difficult.
  • spitfire 16y ago
    No it isn't. It's a matter of maturity and mindset. The avionics industry has it - they use Ada and formal methods, most of the rest of the software development world doesn't. and they pay the price. Honestly I questioned the competence of the LSE when they outsourced their development for the first windows based trading system to a consulting shop. Simply put, they outsourced a core, critical part of the UK's financial infrastructure to boobs. However, I do see some hope in haskell and ocaml entering the financial market.