Analyst Programming Language

Ryan J

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I am interested in learning a programming language. I was thinking about Visual Basic. What would be the most useful for an analyst or portfolio manager? Visual Basic 6.0?
Visual Basic.Net? Matlab?

Thanks in advance.

Ryan
 
you need to know VBA.
it wouldn't hurt if you knew C++ or matlab.
 
Would it be better to learn VBA 6.0 or VBA.Net?

Thanks for your help.
 
I am not sure about the difference but yeah VBA is very helpfull.

My question is how about SQL? I started to see SQL in many job requirements...

I wish they had a unique language which combines everything into one piece.

I already found a name:)

Analyst Programming Language (APL)
 
SQL is a database language. You use VBA to write custom functions and macros in Excel. Totally different animals... IMHO it really doesn't matter what version of VBA you learn, once you know one the differences really are minutiae...
 
"I wish they had a unique language which combines everything into one piece."

Different programming languages accomplish different objectives. For example, SQL is a database language, S and R are statistics, Fortran for engineering, Matlab/Mathematica are used for quantitative analysis/mathematics, etc.

It would be really difficult to try to combine all languages into one since all have different tools and functions. Also, some are proprietary (i.e., Matlab, Mathematica, S-Plus), meaning that you have to have specific programs/licenses to make them effective.

The only one I see being very useful to your standard PM/analyst is VBA.

Programming is pretty easy stuff. Unless you're a developer or quant and need to know it to get a job, you can pick up what you need along the way.

BTW, APL is already a programming language.
 
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