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floki999 | 6 years ago | on: Pattern Matching in Ruby 2.7 (2019)

I used both Python and Ruby extensively for a while, love both, but Ruby was just nicer to code in. The problem for me was the much smaller ecosystem, especially for anything numerical/data related. Numpy was, pre Pandas days, the killer library for the type of work I do.

floki999 | 6 years ago | on: Model beats Wall Street analysts in forecasting business financials

The headline itself demonstrates ignorance as to what matters to an investor putting money on the table. 1. Sell-side analyst forecasts do not drive the investment decisions of the more sophisticated investors. The sell-side is just a big marketing machine and the value-add of the analysis is very low at an individual stock level. 2. The model ‘beats’ the consensus forecast on a limited sample of names. By definition, the consensus forecast is an averaging out which leads to dilution of any one analyst’s alpha - hence it is not an appropriate benchmark.

It is a naive approach and study, but typical of academics who unfortunately have little exposure to real-world investing/trading strategies.

The use of ‘alternative data’ is not new and is definitely leading to alpha generation for some firms, but as mentioned by others such data-driven strategies will usually have limited shelf-life.

floki999 | 6 years ago | on: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

Thank you, Paul Graham, on behalf of obsessive collectors everywhere! This also supports the ‘no free-lunch’ adage. There is merit in exploring uncharted territory, purely for the sake of it, but it is hard work with no guarantees of finding treasure except satisfaction of doing what you are interested in.

floki999 | 6 years ago | on: For Quebec, a French Woman May Not Be French Enough

I’m actually from Belgium, which is in a very similar situation as Quebec: (a) heavy accent which the French love to make fun of and (b) where language wars have been raging forever and taken to ridiculous levels. This mentality of wanting to keep a culture ‘pure’ by trying to control how and where language is used, is a losing battle. Some Quebecers, just like purist francophone Belgians have taken this language obsession to irrational levels, and it has knock-on effects in other aspects of daily-life. I wish Quebecers would just lighten-up about it..

floki999 | 6 years ago | on: For Quebec, a French Woman May Not Be French Enough

Quebec language rules and the minions that enforce them can be quite pathetic. Just a couple of months ago, the debate be was about the right of shop-keepers being able to greet their customers in both English and French, or only in French. Totally ridiculous.

I am also a native French speaker from Europe, and left Montreal because of the backward mentality. I totally respect Quebec’s need to protect their heritage, but you can’t force it down people’s throats. It is counter-productive. It wouldn’t be so funny, if Quebec French wasn’t so hilarious to listen to... they took perfectly good French and turned it into something that is often unrecognizable.

floki999 | 6 years ago

Haven’t tried it yet, but judging from the templates, this is really cool!

floki999 | 6 years ago | on: 2019 Python Developer Survey

I think the python ‘developers’ this survey targets is only the tip of the iceberg.

I’ve been using python for 15+ years, writing production tools, yet I’m not a developer and this is not the focus of my job. I expect there are vast numbers of Python coders out there who develop meaningful tools using Python and know the language well, but whose main activity is not software dev.

Clearly, the survey reflects the audience targeted by JetBrains i.e. web and data scientists - whatever the latter really means.

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