System Development for Individuals (Part 1)

I would love to see a “Dummies” book on system development, but I’m not sure such a book is plausible.  What system development is and how to approach it may vary so much from one person to the next that System Development for Dummies may never come to fruition.

I addressed subjectivity and system development in six blog posts beginning with http://www.optionfanatic.com/2012/10/04/the-subjective-function-part-1.  Howard Bandy’s books define and discuss the objective function.  I renamed this “subjective function” upon realizing the irony that where system development and backtesting sound like scientifically-oriented endeavors, if the measure of success varies from one person to the next then perhaps there’s nothing objective about them at all.

Some of the subjectivity is related to specificity of knowledge.  If I want to know something very specific then I can Google until I’m blue in the face without finding what I need.  Family Law is one example.  As a citizen trying to learn and prepare for a case, I almost need to get reviews on a particular lawyer (since different lawyers will define and strategize differently) in a particular county of a particular state.  This is going to be very difficult information to find because every case is different.  The only place I may be able to get related information is on a particular attorney’s web site, which is not objective enough for my taste.

Education about system development starts with what I can read in books.  Authors of different books use different software packages, though.  Use of one software package limits what I can take away from an author who uses another because anything about the programming language, backtesting capabilities, and even system development definitions may be different from what I know using different software.

I will continue to explicate the knowledge filter in my next post.