Recently in Code Category

We, the developers of mercury markets, are in the last stages of the initial release of our new software system. While the target audience of our application is internal we are making a great deal of effort to make it as user friendly as possible. Our users will have a number of conceptual hurdles to overcome before they will begin to really invest in the new paradigm so we want to make the UI as warm and cuddly as possible.

In the heat of the last minute usability testing Josh Davison busted forth with a gem worthy of repeating.

"Users hate stack traces; they're very frightening. It's the computer equivalent of vomiting blood."

For six months now I have been working on an application to perform automated stock trading. The deadline for the last major hurdle prior to going live in the market, having it run against the clearing house's execution simulator, was originally set for the end March. Deadlines, as they are want to do, slipped and new problems reared their heads. Most recently I found myself with a major refactoring hurdle due to the invalidation of a number of earlier assumptions. Prior to today all runs against the clearing house's simulator crashed and burned in a matter of seconds. finally this morning I had a stretch of 12 minutes before an error. Later, after much fiddling I managed to keep it running for 18 minutes. After one further round of changes which left me feeling excited but guarded, I was able to run it for 32 minutes, right up to the closing bell.