You Are Not Doing It Right

I love when people misuse a technology to the point of frustration until they criticize it as being broken or even stupid.  The results can be significantly more amusing when the technology is mechanical, like hands free faucet, because you get a very tangible experience of human failure.  I long ago swallowed the pill and accepted that we are servants to our technology unless we reach the status of robot overlord.  Once robot overlord status is achieved, one becomes something much more powerful—a small cog in the process, the invisible ghost who directs the technology with symphonic harmony.  This should result in my success in breaking the traditional 30 year work mold and liberating my time to explore other life interests.

Anyhow, I was frustrated with my computer processing power all week and trading naked and without robots.  The reason was a new bit of trading logic which I bolted together and unleashed on 2.5 years of data for backtesting/optimization purposes.  After 94 hours of peaked i7 quad-core processing I was delivered the output, which looked like this:

000000000000000000 00000000 0000000000000000000000000 0 0 0 000000000000000000 0 00000 0000000000000 0      0000000000000000000       0000000000000 0 0 00000000000000 0 000000000

I did it wrong.

And in that moment, rather this entire last week, I learned a lesson about coding logic and testing and life in general.  Before you strap on a jet pack and attempt to cross the Grand Canyon, go hop the drainage ditch in your back yard.  You can work the kinks out much quicker and safer.

I worked out the kinks and tested the logic on 20 days of data to make sure it was working correctly.  Now I am back in the lab, peaking out the processors.  This time, with a bit more thought and proper use of the technology, I can test out 2.5 years of data in 56 minutes.  LOL

Failing is learning, but if you want to shorten the learning curve, spend a few minutes talking with someone who has expended their life years already failing in the same field.