NT7 update

[5iver]

Pissed off in LA

No doubt you guys don't care what I think, but I know I speak for many of your 'valued customers' when I say that this update process is amongst the most pathetic and unprofessional I have ever encountered in my long experience of such matters.

Obviously we are free to switch platforms if we don't like Ninja, but the investment of time; money; education; strategy development and indicator development that many of us have put in to our daily working application simply prohibits an easy migration. We are, to a degree, trapped in the Ninja web.

As a devoted Apple customer, I'm also trapped in their web, but they make damn sure that's not how it feels. They're software is constantly updated and improved. They make sure it works before they release it. They keep their customer base informed and reassured. They keep their promises. They deliver value.

NT 6.5 sucks. We all know it, and we make do with it in anticipation of at least incremental bug fixes and improvements. But they never come.

I trade professionally with a group of six other guys, dotted around the world. We opted for NT because it's what our trading mentor recommended when we all got together. In good faith, we invested significant time and money developing the indies we needed etc. We attended the training classes. Yet not one day goes by without one of us complaining about it. The mere process of restarting NT wipes 15mins at least off a trading day. That's money potentially lost. Why so, when it takes MT4 a mere ten seconds to quit and reboot?

Switching timeframes? A nightmare.
Loading a new Workspace? Like watching paint dry.
Remembering indicator defaults? Not possible.
Data incongruencies, Perpetual.
Corrupted indicators. Naggingly frequent, but no help finding the culprit.
Multichart window arrangement. Not possible.

The list goes on and on and on. As anyone here who's using the tool for real will attest.

Most grievances could have been ironed out piecemeal, like other software developers do it, but instead we're simply ignored or at best offered vague, empty assurances that "you're working on it".

Then, along comes a type-written page of dry, lifeless features offered up to try and stifle all the calls for information about NT7. Followed by the old caveat of "several months of beta"

WTF guys. Are you a one-man band, working out of a garage?

Where does all our money go? It sure isn't showing up in product development, is it.

Yes I'm pissed. Not least because I know I'm gonna get some lame-ass reference to that wretched "NT7 Features & Development Status" document by way of a reply to this. We all know what you're gonna say. That's the painful part. I'm hanging on because I'm obliged to, but be sure I steer as many traders away from Ninja as I can, if asked my opinion. And in my capacity as educator, I get asked A LOT. I know for a fact that others are doing the same. Can that be good for your business?

We don't want three month betas beginning end of September! We've already been waiting since the infamous "Q1 promise". This ain't rocket science. People could've written five trading platforms from sctatch in the time it's taken you to (not) go from 6.5 to 7.0

What is the REAL story?

How about some honesty, just for once?

[itguy]

Re: Pissed off in LA

I think I can answer this on their behalf.

Hi 5iver,

Thank you for your post.

We are targeting a beta release by the end of September followed by a several month beta phase which historically ranged between two to three months.

You can track the development status of NinjaTrader 7 at the following link: http://www.ninjatrader.com/webnew/NT7/NinjaTrader7.html

Please let them know if you have any additional questions or if they are not of any further assistance.

[Mindset]

Sad but true

Still, you have to laugh otherwise you cry.

[velocity]

Itguy,

LOL! that was funny.

[bridenour]

Honestly, it's not unprofessional that they wait and make sure (at least i hope they are making sure) that the next release is a high quality product. The path of least resistance would be to rush out a sub-par product, particularly in response to high pressure posts like this one. You have to realize they are probably a relatively small development shop, so its not unreasonable that most of their focus is on getting out the new version at this point.

Personally, I find 6.5 to be almost unusable for any sophisticated system programming...the features are there but most of them break down when you attempt to use them in combination with each other (backtesting problems, memory consumption, multi-time frame multi instrument problems, lack of portfolio persistence, general instability, i could go on...)

With all that being said, its not too difficult to switch to a competitor. Unfortunately, the reality is almost all of the competitive products are plagued with similar or worse problems, or they just don't even contain the features by design.

Hopefully 7.0 will not only have the features that are being advertised, but they will actually WORK. If that is the case, they will be making a quantum leap beyond the retail competition, at least for system/automated development.

We will see...in the mean time, there is no reason to go overboard with the criticism. If it's that bad, switch...pretty simple.

[NinjaTrader_Ray]

No doubt you guys don't care what I think, but I know I speak for many of your 'valued customers' when I say that this update process is amongst the most pathetic and unprofessional I have ever encountered in my long experience of such matters.

Obviously we are free to switch platforms if we don't like Ninja, but the investment of time; money; education; strategy development and indicator development that many of us have put in to our daily working application simply prohibits an easy migration. We are, to a degree, trapped in the Ninja web.

As a devoted Apple customer, I'm also trapped in their web, but they make damn sure that's not how it feels. They're software is constantly updated and improved. They make sure it works before they release it. They keep their customer base informed and reassured. They keep their promises. They deliver value.

NT 6.5 sucks. We all know it, and we make do with it in anticipation of at least incremental bug fixes and improvements. But they never come.

I trade professionally with a group of six other guys, dotted around the world. We opted for NT because it's what our trading mentor recommended when we all got together. In good faith, we invested significant time and money developing the indies we needed etc. We attended the training classes. Yet not one day goes by without one of us complaining about it. The mere process of restarting NT wipes 15mins at least off a trading day. That's money potentially lost. Why so, when it takes MT4 a mere ten seconds to quit and reboot?

Switching timeframes? A nightmare.
Loading a new Workspace? Like watching paint dry.
Remembering indicator defaults? Not possible.
Data incongruencies, Perpetual.
Corrupted indicators. Naggingly frequent, but no help finding the culprit.
Multichart window arrangement. Not possible.

The list goes on and on and on. As anyone here who's using the tool for real will attest.

Most grievances could have been ironed out piecemeal, like other software developers do it, but instead we're simply ignored or at best offered vague, empty assurances that "you're working on it".

Then, along comes a type-written page of dry, lifeless features offered up to try and stifle all the calls for information about NT7. Followed by the old caveat of "several months of beta"

WTF guys. Are you a one-man band, working out of a garage?

Where does all our money go? It sure isn't showing up in product development, is it.

Yes I'm pissed. Not least because I know I'm gonna get some lame-ass reference to that wretched "NT7 Features & Development Status" document by way of a reply to this. We all know what you're gonna say. That's the painful part. I'm hanging on because I'm obliged to, but be sure I steer as many traders away from Ninja as I can, if asked my opinion. And in my capacity as educator, I get asked A LOT. I know for a fact that others are doing the same. Can that be good for your business?

We don't want three month betas beginning end of September! We've already been waiting since the infamous "Q1 promise". This ain't rocket science. People could've written five trading platforms from sctatch in the time it's taken you to (not) go from 6.5 to 7.0

What is the REAL story?

How about some honesty, just for once?

I see that you are extremely pissed. I will just get to the point.

- We have told you the real story and have never been dishonest
- To sum it up
- We are late --> No excuses
- We did not communicate this early enough
- In June we communicated our development plan and a moving target date of end of September for an initial beta release
- As of this post, we are still on track for that
- Our historical beta periods our around three months long

We bit off a lot of items in NT7 and we just underestimated the development time. It's that simple. I hope you don't switch platforms and stay with us however there is nothing more than the list of the "dry features" that you referenced when we come out with NT7.

[5iver]

Honestly, it's not unprofessional that they wait and make sure (at least i hope they are making sure) that the next release is a high quality product.

Of course not. And I hate it when people mouth off prematurely. But this ain't exactly "rushing out a sub-par product" is it. Ray has since responded, with an honest "we're late", which is cool. I just don't understand why individual issues couldn't have been incrementally addressed over the last two years, rather than one, giant, critical upgrade. I'm not going to bang on about it any more.

Personally, I find 6.5 to be almost unusable for any sophisticated system programming...the features are there but most of them break down when you attempt to use them in combination with each other (backtesting problems, memory consumption, multi-time frame multi instrument problems, lack of portfolio persistence, general instability, i could go on...)

Need I say more. Now ALL the responsibility is on this ONE upgrade, which puts so much pressure on them, it's crazy.

With all that being said, its not too difficult to switch to a competitor. Unfortunately, the reality is almost all of the competitive products are plagued with similar or worse problems, or they just don't even contain the features by design.

No, it's perfectly possible to switch, as I said in my original rant, but as you also point out, it's often out of the frying pan...

Hopefully 7.0 will not only have the features that are being advertised, but they will actually WORK. If that is the case, they will be making a quantum leap beyond the retail competition, at least for system/automated development.

Which is why I'm still here. But I've paid good money, I feel entitled to one good moan, no?

We will see...in the mean time, there is no reason to go overboard with the criticism. If it's that bad, switch...pretty simple.

I refer respectfully to your own, previous comments.

[5iver]

I see that you are extremely pissed. I will just get to the point.

- We have told you the real story and have never been dishonest
- To sum it up
- We are late --> No excuses
- We did not communicate this early enough
- In June we communicated our development plan and a moving target date of end of September for an initial beta release
- As of this post, we are still on track for that
- Our historical beta periods our around three months long

We bit off a lot of items in NT7 and we just underestimated the development time. It's that simple. I hope you don't switch platforms and stay with us however there is nothing more than the list of the "dry features" that you referenced when we come out with NT7.

Thank you Ray. I'm not going to be one of those morons who keeps banging on about it. I said my piece. I look forward to NT7. What are the qualifications for becoming a beta tester? I'll put the hours in, if that's what it takes.

[T2020]

Will the vertical line drawing tool (F7)cross into lower panes in NT 7 ?
I mean without having to draw a 2nd or 3rd line to show it in Lower panes .

[NinjaTrader_Ray]

Will the vertical line drawing tool (F7)cross into lower panes in NT 7 ?
I mean without having to draw a 2nd or 3rd line to show it in Lower panes .

Unfortunately not, the behaviour will be the same as 6.5.

[NinjaTrader_Ray]

Thank you Ray. I'm not going to be one of those morons who keeps banging on about it. I said my piece. I look forward to NT7. What are the qualifications for becoming a beta tester? I'll put the hours in, if that's what it takes.

I appreciate the offer. At this time, its unclear if we will open up beta to anyone or to a limited set of a few hundred users during the 1st phase. If the latter, just send a note to support to my attention once we release information on how we will rollout the 1st beta.

[JS999]

I appreciate the offer. At this time, its unclear if we will open up beta to anyone or to a limited set of a few hundred users during the 1st phase. If the latter, just send a note to support to my attention once we release information on how we will rollout the 1st beta.

I strongly suggest that you open it up to anyone. I fail to see why you should limit the beta to only a few hundred users, given that you should want to get as much testing done as possible in the least amount of time. All that's going to happen if you roll it out to a limited group is that you're going to delay finding out about some bugs - the more people you have using this thing, the faster the problems will be found and therefore fixed. Besides, this is the first I am hearing of a "limited" beta, which is sounding suspiciously like another backtrack, Ray. You promised us a public beta at the end of September or thereabouts - DELIVER IT. Whatever state it is in, we will all test it. I don't even care if you're a week or two late - but I want a public version of this software to use by the middle of October at the absolute latest... just get it done.

[marketmasher]

I am looking forward to ver 7 also. However, I don't think it is unreasonable to limit the first roll-out to what is hopefully a group of astute programmers. From having done some programming in the past, end-users are all of different skill levels, and the more inexperienced ones can often report back a bug that is actually a user error. The lack of knowledgeable filtering can lead to a deluge of non-issues. Those at a higher level of knowledge and experience will object to being lumped into that category, but this doesn't apply to them. The screening process for level of sophistication can be tricky though.

[JS999]

I am looking forward to ver 7 also. However, I don't think it is unreasonable to limit the first roll-out to what is hopefully a group of astute programmers. From having done some programming in the past, end-users are all of different skill levels, and the more inexperienced ones can often report back a bug that is actually a user error. The lack of knowledgeable filtering can lead to a deluge of non-issues. Those at a higher level of knowledge and experience will object to being lumped into that category, but this doesn't apply to them. The screening process for level of sophistication can be tricky though.

Ray promised us a public beta, he never said anything about a limited roll-out until now. And they already are rolling it out to their partners earlier, so that fits the description of a limited group of "astute programmers" that you are talking about. In any case, since I have programming and software design knowledge I would be a good beta tester so I would suggest that they consider me as part of their initial group even if they don't release it to everyone.... but I still think that they should live up to their promises and release it to the public on time.

[NinjaTrader_Ray]

Ray promised us a public beta, he never said anything about a limited roll-out until now. And they already are rolling it out to their partners earlier, so that fits the description of a limited group of "astute programmers" that you are talking about. In any case, since I have programming and software design knowledge I would be a good beta tester so I would suggest that they consider me as part of their initial group even if they don't release it to everyone.... but I still think that they should live up to their promises and release it to the public on time.

Historically, we have always released public beta in waves. We may do this again we may not, I have not made that decision yet. I understand where you are coming from however it is not accurate to say that the more people testing the faster we will uncover issues. Quite the opposite. The more people testing, the more effort goes into reviewing each and every reported incident and we can quickly get overwhelmed and make no progress. We can have anywhere up to 16,000 active users using our software a day. If even a small portion of this base decided to test out NT7 and start reporting issues we could easily get overwhelmed.

In any case, if I decide a wave rollout is warranted, I am happy to include you in the 1st wave.