There's a lot of interesting engineering that goes into finance. It's hard to get into the domain where milliseconds are of crucial importance and not involve

There's a lot of interesting engineering that goes into finance. It's hard to get into the domain where milliseconds are of crucial importance and not involve some seriously hairy engineering. Finance, even aside from the practical engineering aspects, can be full of deliciously crunchy theory and mathematics. It isn't all fifty year old frat boys getting shithammered in tawdry NYC bars (though that part can be fun too when they no longer care what is ordered on the corporate tab ;)). Consider this: google is essentially a gigantic clearinghouse for advertising, a topic I think few here are likely to feel deep personal passion about, and yet how much interesting tech have they cranked out over the course of their corporate existence? As for reward for effort expended the goal seems to be finding interesting work, and this sounds like a lot more fun than taking time off work to go mumble about the same old things from Cormen while sweating in front of a whiteboard to me, but ymmv. Speaking only for myself, presuming for a second that I have time to mess with this when it is released (no sure thing, full time job and two young kids...), even if I don't get a job out of it, learning something about AVR, security, etc. sounds like a worthwhile return on time invested.