Bollinger Bands® Message Board

[brian.boughner@bankofamerica.com]

John and others,

I believe you are an advocate of infusing more statistical and quantitavtive techniques into technical analysis. I have very little quant and programming experience and was wondering if you could recommend some books or resources for someone wanting to learn more about the quantitative and programming side of things as it relates to money management and analysis.

thanks,
Brian

[bbands@bollingerbands.com]

First, I'll take on the programming idea.

I started coding in BASIC many years ago. In fact I used Microsoft's first product, a BASIC compiler for the CP/M operating system. Over the years I faithfully followed the upgrade cycle, MBASIC, QuickBasic, VisualBasic…, until along came .NET, which was a step too far.

Faced with a need for change I looked around for another language and ultimately chose Python, which is named after Monte Python, not the snake. Dead Parrot

Python is free, has a vibrant user community and boasts an incredible array of time-saving packages. Python suits me perfectly and I am once again a happy camper. So my recommendation is the Norwegian Blue. Python's home on the web here: Python

Guido van Rossum, Python's creator and benevolent dictator for life, wrote a tutorial for python that is as good as any introductory programming tutorial I have ever seen, which can be found here: Python

Here is the official Python FAQ: Python FAQ

The user group can be found here: Python Users Group

Python-URL! A great e-mail newsletter and resource guide.
Subscribe by writing to Cameron@phaseit.com

Enjoy,

jab

[brian.boughner@bankofamerica.com]

thanks John,

as a novice, I get very easily lost in the programming world.

spent some time on the website and the FAQ's.
I found this very encouraging in answering the question if Python was a good language for beginning programmers.

"using Python in a beginning programming course permits students to concentrate on important programming skills such as problem decomposition and data type design. With Python, students can be quickly introduced to basic concepts such as loops and procedures. They can even probably work with user-defined objects in their very first course.
For a student who has never programmed before, using a statically typed language seems unnatural. It presents additional complexity that the student must master and slows the pace of the course. The students are trying to learn to think like a computer, decompose problems, design consistent interfaces, and encapsulate data. While learning to use a statically typed language is important in the long term, it is not necessarily the best topic to address in the students' first programming course."


looks like there are also a good amount of introductory books that have been published.

http://wiki.python.org/moin/IntroductoryBooks

[bbands@bollingerbands.com]

I have some of the books. I like "Learning Python" and the "Python Cookbook", both from O'Reilly, and I hear some of the others are great too. But by all means plunge right in and start with the tutorial, it is terrific and before you know it you be happily coding away the days.

When you get down the road a piece, come back and ask about NumPy.

Good luck,

jab