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Why is C++ good for Quantitative Finance? Top 3 reasons

There is actually a trend (or at least it appeared) to start into to CS 101 with Python. I learned (a bit of) Python in my own time before now enrolling in an office university JAVA course and find it a pain in the *ss :) . But I have to spend a lot of less time on the course than my fellow courses, because I already understand the algorythms.

I would love to learn some JAVA / C / Lisp ideas, but just stick to Python afterwards. At least in academics Python is already #1 afa I can tell.

You learn by doing, not by ideas in this particular context. In industry, you can't pick and choose. Flexible.
 
C++ is great for computer graphics and CAD applications. That's where I started.

I guess I did too, haha, - but it was in BASIC I think in a computer "science" course in 7th grade around 1992. It was the most exciting thing I had scene when it started colorful drawing lines on the screen. If we had had an actual computer at home I might have gone straight to CS in school!
 
1. libraries for number crunching
2. libraries for number crunching
3. libraries for number crunching
// the above also includes ancillary-to-number-crunching libs, like the ones for parallel computing
 
I guess I did too, haha, - but it was in BASIC I think in a computer "science" course in 7th grade around 1992. It was the most exciting thing I had scene when it started colorful drawing lines on the screen. If we had had an actual computer at home I might have gone straight to CS in school!

Graphics is great!

Here is an article from 1995 on CADObject in C++ that we built for engineering apps and still use.

http://www.datasim.nl/Education/Articles/DP/WhitePaper2.html
 
1. libraries for number crunching
2. libraries for number crunching
3. libraries for number crunching
// the above also includes ancillary-to-number-crunching libs, like the ones for parallel computing

Fortran excels++ at number crunching and has buckets of libraries that exist for > 50 years. It is king.

C++ is good for other reasons in addition to 1.
 
Fortran excels++ at number crunching and has buckets of libraries that exist for > 50 years. It is king.

C++ is good for other reasons in addition to 1.

Indeed, Fortran could be considered a numerics-oriented DSL (although I'd say there's a greater variety in the numerical linear algebra libs in C++ nowadays -- and most of the Fortran libs have a C/C++ version or are accessible from C/C++, while modern, C++ template libs aren't available from Fortran; although I certainly wouldn't mind some of this stuff coming into Standard C++ -- even that A(I,J) syntax, if you know what I mean...).
It's just when you'd like to do something with the number-crunching engine (e.g., feed it some data over the network, interact with your models via Excel, produce pretty pictures) where the general purpose nature of C++ comes in handy -- let's stick it all under the ancillary-to-number-crunching label ;]
 
Hi to all .I'm a student planning to do an MSc in Applied Mathematics with the focus in Financial Mathematics research.My MSc will be research base>Now woulds like some advice.I don't know which software to between C++,MATLAb and VB.I plan to seek for job in finance/financial industry but don't know much about what I have to .I can see comment being posted about c++ but don't know much about it ...
 
Sorry, offtopic but just a small question:

How many hours of studying C++ (or JAVA) would it take to be able to contribute something useful as a programmer? Let's say I spend 20 hours a week on it..
 
"The key is deliberative practice: not just doing it again and again, but challenging yourself with a task that is just beyond your current ability, trying it, analyzing your performance while and after doing it, and correcting any mistakes. Then repeat. And repeat again. "
 
Sorry, offtopic but just a small question:

How many hours of studying C++ (or JAVA) would it take to be able to contribute something useful as a programmer? Let's say I spend 20 hours a week on it..

That's 10^4 hours in total.
 
Hi to all .I'm a student planning to do an MSc in Applied Mathematics with the focus in Financial Mathematics research.My MSc will be research base>Now woulds like some advice.I don't know which software to between C++,MATLAb and VB.I plan to seek for job in finance/financial industry but don't know much about what I have to .I can see comment being posted about c++ but don't know much about it ...
The school is : School of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science at University of KwaZulu-Natal(This University is at the country called South Africa).
 
The type and quality of practice is the most important thing, not the sum total of time spent practising.
That's what you always say..

Apply this to C++. Can you come up with a training scheme so that you get to the level of Polter, for example?

In my case I reckon I have done [20, 40]K hours C++, all things taken into consideration.

As Alexander Pope said, a little learning is a dangerous thing.

This guy used to train in judo 7 hours per day!

 
If c++ is as good as most people claim I'm not against that I just wanna know more about the best program to use to code as a Quant/upcoming Quant.What about the speed of c++ as compare to MATLAB and python is c++ much better than these programs in-terms of speed?
 
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