MC PL vs .NET version - possibilities and challenges

Questions about MultiCharts and user contributed studies.
hilbert
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MC PL vs .NET version - possibilities and challenges

Postby hilbert » 02 Dec 2014

Folks who use both PL and .NET version of MC: It will be awesome if some of you can take time and write in detail (with examples) about the advantages of .NET version over PL version and what kind of time commitment a very comfortable user of PL will face (who is not conversant with .NET framework) in moving over to MC.NET in terms of both:
a) time taken for learning C# and .NET framework
b) time taken for porting his existing PL code to .NET code.

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TJ
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Re: MC PL vs .NET version - possibilities and challenges

Postby TJ » 02 Dec 2014

Folks who use both PL and .NET version of MC: It will be awesome if some of you can take time and write in detail (with examples) about the advantages of .NET version over PL version and what kind of time commitment a very comfortable user of PL will face (who is not conversant with .NET framework) in moving over to MC.NET in terms of both:
a) time taken for learning C# and .NET framework
b) time taken for porting his existing PL code to .NET code.
My 2 cents:

>a) time taken for learning C# and .NET framework

Everyone is different; it is difficult to duplicate other people's learning experience...However it is easy to find out for yourself... there are lots of free tutorials on the web. Pick one and go through a few of the lessons. You should get an idea after one day; either C# speaks to you, or it doesn't. If it doesn't, it will give you a headache. :-)

Some people like C# more than EasyLanguage, but most of the non-programmers found it a challenge to learn, and it takes a L-O-N-G time to master OOP. It will also require more efforts to write efficient codes.

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Re: MC PL vs .NET version - possibilities and challenges

Postby orion » 02 Dec 2014

TJ, Henry,

For someone who is very comfortable with C# and a handful of other OOP languages, can you post key pros and cons of MC.NET vs MC.PL? I use the PL platform but I have been wondering whether MC.NET would be a better choice. I don't want to spend a month playing with the MC.NET platform to find out.

Some key questions:

1) Are all features in PL platform available in the .NET platform and vice versa? My impression is that .NET platform does not have portfolio trader. Is that correct? Do you have a list of such features that one platform has and other doesn't?

2) Are all datafeeds and execution gateways supported by both platforms?

3) How much faster is .NET vs PL when it comes to crunching moving averages or bollinger bands?

4) From a platform reliability perspective, is the .NET platform more or less buggy than the PL platform?

5) Roughly, what is the ratio of engineering resources MC deploys on .NET vs PL?

Thanks.

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ABC
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Re: MC PL vs .NET version - possibilities and challenges

Postby ABC » 02 Dec 2014

Let me give you some answers from what I understand in regards to your question.

1)Yes, MC.NET has all features of MC PL. MC.NET platform has features PL doesn't have, like programmatic access to the volume profile for example.

2) Yes

3) Don't think it's noticeably faster. Depends on the code of course, quality etc.

4) The same.

5) Don't know, but the core platform is the same only the language you use in it for studies is different.

Regards,
ABC

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Henry MultiСharts
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Re: MC PL vs .NET version - possibilities and challenges

Postby Henry MultiСharts » 02 Dec 2014

Hello orion,

In addition to the information provided by ABC:
1) MultiCharts and MultiCharts .NET have the same features (Portfolio Trader is available in MultiCharts .NET as well), but are using different programming languages. .NET gives you more possibilities, that is possible to create more sophisticated tools and reach more complex goals with it.

PowerLanguage is good for beginners because it is very easy to learn it. It is also popular because of backward compatibility with TS. Most scripts from TS ver 8.x can run in MultiCharts from the box, some codes require simple modifications (TS object oriented programming is not supported). A lot of EasyLanguage code is available for free over the Internet.

MultiCharts .Net provides more functionality and flexibility. For example with this version for professional programmers you can utilize such great features as GDI drawings of any shape and C# native inter process communication.

EasyLanguage/PowerLanguage limitation of trading only one instrument from a chart can be easily overcome as order management can be 100% user controlled by means of unmanaged orders. That is possible to trade from anywhere your code is running i.e. chart or scanner, multi-symbol trading from the same code is also possible without Portfolio Trader. Examples:
viewtopic.php?f=20&t=10730
viewtopic.php?f=20&t=11028

With MultiCharts .Net you can create custom trading and indicator setup toolbars right on your chart. That is possible to load a data series and perform calculations on it without adding an instrument to the chart directly.

MultiCharts .Net provides access to data of Volume based chart types (Volume Profile, Volume Delta), which Power Language does not have.

All of that is not possible with PowerLanguage at all or can be achieved only by means of external dlls.

3) Generally Multicharts.NET works faster for complex calcualtions. Zoli has provided his test results here.

5) There is a single team working on MultiCharts/MultiCharts .NET. Feature requests/bug reports have the same priority for both versions.

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Re: MC PL vs .NET version - possibilities and challenges

Postby zfsamzfsam » 02 Dec 2014

Why not merging Multicharts and Multicharts.NET?

http://www.multicharts.com/pm/viewissue ... no=MC-1634

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Re: MC PL vs .NET version - possibilities and challenges

Postby shanemcdonald » 03 Dec 2014

why merge them ?

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MAtricks
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Re: MC PL vs .NET version - possibilities and challenges

Postby MAtricks » 03 Dec 2014

why merge them ?
It seems like a much more sensible option to me.. Power Language is amazing for developing ideas. I wouldn't ever want to part with it because of how simple it is to create ideas. However, I'd also like the programmatic control of C# in several strategies. Bouncing back and forth between platforms is a pain. Plus, if MC sold a platform with both languages, it would be a huge selling point for them. The only reason why anyone selects TS over MC is because of OOEL which is offered in the same scripts as EL. What if TS offered two software packages which separated the two? From a consumer's point of view, how silly would that be? :)

The difference between the two:
-MC.net is for professional programmers. If you're used to having complete control, this is the option you'd prefer. It's more work, but you can do just about everything you want with it.

-MC is for anybody. It's easy to learn and the software handles a lot of the complex coding. You can literally write a successful strategy with 4 lines of code. This is good and bad.. depending on your programming level and strategy ambitions.

The bottom line is that you probably want both, but will end up dealing with just one because they're not together. I have both and very rarely ever open the other because its annoying to bounce back and forth.

Having said all that, I doubt MC would consider merging them. If they started that way, I'd be all for it, but now that they're both built, I'm not sure I'd be happy with the merging process.

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Re: MC PL vs .NET version - possibilities and challenges

Postby hilbert » 03 Dec 2014

why merge them ?
It seems like a much more sensible option to me.. Power Language is amazing for developing ideas. I wouldn't ever want to part with it because of how simple it is to create ideas. However, I'd also like the programmatic control of C# in several strategies. Bouncing back and forth between platforms is a pain. Plus, if MC sold a platform with both languages, it would be a huge selling point for them. The only reason why anyone selects TS over MC is because of OOEL which is offered in the same scripts as EL. What if TS offered two software packages which separated the two? From a consumer's point of view, how silly would that be? :)
Correct, many people want to use both the PL for fast prototyping and .NET version for writing more complex code and doing things that are not possible with the PL version. MC allows a license holder to purchase another version for a discount, however, as MAtricks rightly pointed out its a pain to switch between licenses for work everyday. It will be much more convenient if both the functions are available in one MC.

Their official price is 1497$ for either PL version or .NET version of MC. A combined version of MC (which has both PL and .NET) can easily be sold for 1997$. I would be willing to convert my regular MC license to the MC version that supports both these technologies. I am sure many others would also go for such a combined version rather than buying 2 different versions.

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Re: MC PL vs .NET version - possibilities and challenges

Postby orion » 03 Dec 2014

It seems like a much more sensible option to me.. Power Language is amazing for developing ideas. I wouldn't ever want to part with it because of how simple it is to create ideas. However, I'd also like the programmatic control of C# in several strategies. Bouncing back and forth between platforms is a pain. Plus, if MC sold a platform with both languages, it would be a huge selling point for them.
MAtricks, I couldn't agree with you more.

When I started with MC about 8 weeks back, I went with MC.PL for two reasons: (a) PL allows rapid prototyping, (b) I had a misunderstanding from reading the MC website that MC.NET only supports portfolio backtesting while MC.PL supports portfolio trading. MC website still uses those words for the two platforms under their respective feature lists which means MC marketing does not do adequate justice to its great software platform.

PL is a DSL (domain specific language) while C# is a general purpose programming language. A platform that provides both a DSL and a general purpose language can be better than one that provides only one or the other. Having a platform that supports both PL and C# under one roof would be a very sensible thing since one would be able to do rapid prototyping with one while having the option for more performance and greater customization and control over the underlying infrastructure with the other.

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Re: MC PL vs .NET version - possibilities and challenges

Postby janus » 04 Dec 2014

My experience is from other languages, such as VB and a little C++. I suppose I can have the same argument as to whether MC.NET and MC.PL should be merged or not. I can see certain market advantages to merging them - the main one is it would attract more customers with a price entry point comparable to other solutions, such as NT, who can start off with PL and then later migrate to a more sophisticated language like C#, C++ or VB. On the other hand, as also stated before, it would be annoying to toggle between the two different environments. Perhaps MC should take a survey to find out what the customers really like to have with respect to all this.

Despite the fact I am an experienced programmer going way back, I still prefer to use PL although I have considered migrating to MC.NET a few times. I'm resisting the temptation as I want to focus on trading, and PL does everything I need with my own DLL extensions. Still, I would love to migrate purely from a programming point of view to keep things all in one place without the need to rely heavily on external DLLs to perform such simple tasks as displaying a Windows message box, or more complex tasks like using named pipes and tcp/ip sockets to communicate with other applications I've developed; and perhaps one day I will.

I actually would prefer that MC develop a third type of study in MC.PL that performs all the features of a strategy and an indicator combined. That I believe would make it simpler and more attractive for novice traders. Another idea is for MC to develop an IDE (probably an addon to the VS IDE already employed for MC.NET) to make it a lot easier and simpler for traders to create studies. I've use Eclipse for Java development and it comes with many different plug-ins to help programmers in all sorts of applications. I see a desperate need to make programming for traders, novice and experienced alike, as easy and simple as possible so they can focus on the task at hand, namely trading to make money.

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Henry MultiСharts
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Re: MC PL vs .NET version - possibilities and challenges

Postby Henry MultiСharts » 10 Dec 2014

When I started with MC about 8 weeks back, I went with MC.PL for two reasons: (a) PL allows rapid prototyping, (b) I had a misunderstanding from reading the MC website that MC.NET only supports portfolio backtesting while MC.PL supports portfolio trading. MC website still uses those words for the two platforms under their respective feature lists which means MC marketing does not do adequate justice to its great software platform.
Hello orion,

We are apologize for the confusion. The related webpage has been updated with the up-to-date information.

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Henry MultiСharts
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Re: MC PL vs .NET version - possibilities and challenges

Postby Henry MultiСharts » 10 Dec 2014

Dear users,

Thank you for your feedback. At the moment we do not plan merging MultiCharts and MultiCharts .NET together. We consider the current product line suitable for most of the users and provide discounts for additional licenses as well as ability to convert your license into a different product.


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