5 ms·

I suspect Bloomberg terminals fit that bill.

mhh__ 2y ago
avg salary of a bloomberg user is lower than some people might think because there are a lot of support staff who have bloomberg. As for the UI: I wish more things were like bloomberg, but bloomberg itself can be slightly hobbled by wanting to lay everything out as a table all the time when a custom chart designed by a creative domain-expert would be almost as useful.
- defrost 2y ago
  There's two clear points to be made: * Why change to something that's "almost as useful" .. that's a downgrade. * Pretty is often the enemy of Consistent. On that second point, it doesn't have to be .. but it can take a great deal more effort to have data presentation that's both creative and consistent and dense. The domain goals here are rapid navigation of dense infomation across tens of thousands of companies, timespans, portfolios, groupings, comparisons, etc. With a good interface the user quickly finds the desired scope and view and automatically eye tracks to the wanted figures. It's not an interface for pretty board room presentations (although in an organisation that promotes based on merit in the ditches most senior staff would be familiar with a Bloomberg Board) - it's a daily driver for engine room. I'm not defending this specific interface, just highlighting what is common to many similar domain tools.
  - mhh__ 2y ago
    > Why change to something that's "almost as useful" .. that's a downgrade. To clarify: There would be two modes, for example, when looking at the prices of options you might want to see the shape of the smile (e.g. equivalent to the markets view of a certain probability distribution), but when trading a specific option you want to know everything about it down to exact prices. it's not about pretty-ness, indeed some of these charts can be completely incomprehensible, but rather density. Our UIs should be more than just Excel-but-not-in-Excel!
- throwaway2037 2y ago
  > there are a lot of support staff who have bloomberg. Much less than people think. It costs about 25K USD per year per terminal. There might be one shared terminal in a whole middle or back office.
solardev 2y ago
I'd never heard of those until your post, and had to look up a Youtube about what they were: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ee-x6IXWK8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ee-x6IXWK8 That's super fascinating. There's an entire industry that runs off these things, on their totally custom UI, showing everything from stock tickers to news headlines to maps? That must be a fun project to work on (except probably the finance users don't like random UI changes, lol).
- pokepim 2y ago
  lol this is probably most famous financial tool on the market. No wonder we have so many new software tools being created daily since some people don’t do basic market research.
  - solardev 2y ago
    I work in UI, but never in finance. I don't even own a stock (is that even the right word?) and have never invested. Anyway, I wish I got to encounter this system earlier in my career... would've loved to experiment with a UI like that! News ticker under a real time map that you can use to drill down to specific regions to see what's going on? It's fascinating. And it looks like their map is using some sort of serverside raster tiling where even simple arrows have to be redrawn on different zoom levels... just random things I'd be eager to try to improve.
    - tionate 2y ago
      A bit off topic but it may be worth looking into investing a little (maybe basic index ETFs as suggested by the FIRE movement). You can fairly quickly get to a point where your investments go up (or down, but more often up) more in a day than your monthly income.
      - solardev 2y ago
        Yeah, at 40, it's probably (way past) time I start looking into things like that, lol. But first I have some massive debts to pay off first :(

avg salary of a bloomberg user is lower than some people might think because there are a lot of support staff who have bloomberg. As for the UI: I wish more things were like bloomberg, but bloomberg itself can be slightly hobbled by wanting to lay everything out as a table all the time when a custom chart designed by a creative domain-expert would be almost as useful.

defrost 2y ago
There's two clear points to be made: * Why change to something that's "almost as useful" .. that's a downgrade. * Pretty is often the enemy of Consistent. On that second point, it doesn't have to be .. but it can take a great deal more effort to have data presentation that's both creative and consistent and dense. The domain goals here are rapid navigation of dense infomation across tens of thousands of companies, timespans, portfolios, groupings, comparisons, etc. With a good interface the user quickly finds the desired scope and view and automatically eye tracks to the wanted figures. It's not an interface for pretty board room presentations (although in an organisation that promotes based on merit in the ditches most senior staff would be familiar with a Bloomberg Board) - it's a daily driver for engine room. I'm not defending this specific interface, just highlighting what is common to many similar domain tools.
- mhh__ 2y ago
  > Why change to something that's "almost as useful" .. that's a downgrade. To clarify: There would be two modes, for example, when looking at the prices of options you might want to see the shape of the smile (e.g. equivalent to the markets view of a certain probability distribution), but when trading a specific option you want to know everything about it down to exact prices. it's not about pretty-ness, indeed some of these charts can be completely incomprehensible, but rather density. Our UIs should be more than just Excel-but-not-in-Excel!
throwaway2037 2y ago
> there are a lot of support staff who have bloomberg. Much less than people think. It costs about 25K USD per year per terminal. There might be one shared terminal in a whole middle or back office.

solardev 2y ago

I'd never heard of those until your post, and had to look up a Youtube about what they were: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ee-x6IXWK8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ee-x6IXWK8 That's super fascinating. There's an entire industry that runs off these things, on their totally custom UI, showing everything from stock tickers to news headlines to maps? That must be a fun project to work on (except probably the finance users don't like random UI changes, lol).

pokepim 2y ago
lol this is probably most famous financial tool on the market. No wonder we have so many new software tools being created daily since some people don’t do basic market research.
- solardev 2y ago
  I work in UI, but never in finance. I don't even own a stock (is that even the right word?) and have never invested. Anyway, I wish I got to encounter this system earlier in my career... would've loved to experiment with a UI like that! News ticker under a real time map that you can use to drill down to specific regions to see what's going on? It's fascinating. And it looks like their map is using some sort of serverside raster tiling where even simple arrows have to be redrawn on different zoom levels... just random things I'd be eager to try to improve.
  - tionate 2y ago
    A bit off topic but it may be worth looking into investing a little (maybe basic index ETFs as suggested by the FIRE movement). You can fairly quickly get to a point where your investments go up (or down, but more often up) more in a day than your monthly income.
    - solardev 2y ago
      Yeah, at 40, it's probably (way past) time I start looking into things like that, lol. But first I have some massive debts to pay off first :(