Using Java In Low Latency Environments

twofishy writes "Something I've noticed amongst financial service companies in London is a growing use of Java in preference to C/C++ for exchange systems, High Frequency Trading and over low-latency work. InfoQ has a good written panel discussion with Peter Lawrey, Martin Thompson, Todd L. Montgomery and Andy Piper. From the article: 'Often the faster an algorithm can be put into the market, the more advantage it has. Many algorithms have a shelf life and quicker time to market is key in taking advantage of that. With the community around Java and the options available, it can definitely be a competitive advantage, as opposed to C or C++ where the options may not be as broad for the use case. Sometimes, though, pure low latency can rule out other concerns. I think currently, the difference in performance between Java and C++ is so close that it's not a black and white decision based solely on speed. Improvements in GC techniques, JIT optimizations, and managed runtimes have made traditional Java weaknesses with respect to performance into some very compelling strengths that are not easy to ignore.'"

Comments

JAVA could be great if it lost weighrt.

[sg_oneill]

The chest beating about Java vs C is kinda sad. Look, I've spent the past 20 years hating java with the fire of a 1000 suns, but having been kinda forced to use it lately I've realised its actually not a bad language, in fact its quite neat and well thought out (But god help me, somehow its date handling is even more broken than javascript)

The problem is all the verbose cruft that goes with it. The giant overly complicated frameworks that require configuring 50 different XML files fed through a labrynith undocumented build process that allows you to write terse and insane pattern-madness code ....or alternatively just fire up JDBC and write a bloody SQL query instead.

I think JAVA could shine if people just threw out about 15 years of insane and overly complicated frameworks and took some tips from the python and perl people and replace them with some simple but effective libraries that do one thing and do it well.

But hey, at least its not bloody javascript!

Re:Huh?

[elfprince13]

Manual memory management is a whole class of bugs that Java doesn't have to deal with. A good C/C++ programmer shouldn't have *that* much difficulty, but it does add to debugging costs and detracts from mental focus on the algorithmic aspects of the problem.

Re:Huh?

[smcdow]

The article suggest that one solution is to simply not do GC until the end of the trading day. I have to admit that's a good pragmatic solution, certainly so for HF prop traders.

Not enough memory on your servers? Add more. Still not enough? Add even more. The cost would be a pittance for any prop trading company worth its salt.