Pitching an investment bank on using D for their bond analytics

Iain Buclaw via Digitalmars-d digitalmars-d at puremagic.com
Tue Apr 14 05:53:35 PDT 2015


On 14 April 2015 at 14:16, Rikki Cattermole via Digitalmars-d
<digitalmars-d at puremagic.com> wrote:
> On 15/04/2015 12:08 a.m., D Denizen since a year wrote:
>>
>> Hi.
>>
>> I have been here a year or so, and trust you will forgive my posting
>> pseudonymously on this occasion.  If you guess who it is, please be kind
>> enough not to say for now.
>>
>> A friend has been invited to be a consultant for an investment bank that
>> would like to build a set of analytics for fixed income products.  The
>> team is currently quite small - about 5 C++ developers - and the idea is
>> to start with a proof of concept and then build on it as there is
>> further buy-in from the business.
>>
>> Having been using D for a year or so, I am pretty comfortable that it
>> can do the job, and likely much better than the C++ route for all the
>> normal reasons.  I haven't experience of using D in a proper enterprise
>> environment, but I think this group might be open to trying D and that I
>> might be at least part-time involved.
>>
>> I also have little experience in getting across the merits of this
>> technology to people very used to C++, and so I have not yet built up a
>> standard set of answers to the normal objections to 'buying' that will
>> crop up in any situation of this sort.
>>
>> So I am interested in:
>>
>> - what are the things to emphasize in building the case for trying D?
>> the most effective factors that persuade people are not identical with
>> the technically strongest reasons, because often one needs to see it
>> before one gets it.
>>
>> - what are the likely pitfalls in the early days?
>>
>> - what are potential factors that might make D a bad choice in this
>> scenario?  I would like to use D certainly - but it is of course much
>> more important that the client gets the best result, however it is done.
>>
>> - am I right in thinking C++ integration more or less works, except
>> instantiating C++ templates from D?  what are the gotchas?
>>
>> (I appreciate there is not so much to go on, and much depends on
>> specific factors).  But any quick thoughts and experiences would be very
>> welcome.
>
>
> Just a thought, try getting them to use D for prototyping. Worse case they
> will play around with D before settling on e.g. c++. Best case scenario
> they'll move it into production.

The best case scenario has happened at least once before in a
similarly-based company.


More information about the Digitalmars-d mailing list