Python in financial services

[wxjmfauth at gmail.com]

Le mardi 12 août 2014 09:33:11 UTC+2, Rustom Mody a écrit :
> Ive been asked to formulate a python course for financial services folk.
> 
> 
> 
> If I actually knew about the subject, I'd have fatter pockets!
> 
> Anyway heres some thoughts. What I am missing out?
> 
> 
> 
> [Apart from basic python -- contents typically needs tailoring to the audience] the following:
> 
> 
> 
> - Libraries -- Decimal?
> 
> - scripts -- philosophy and infrastructure eg argparse, os.path
> 
> - Pandas
> 
> - Numpy Scipy (which? how much?)
> 
> - ipython + matplotlib + ??
> 
> - Database interfacing
> 
> - Excel interfacing (couple of libraries.. which?)
> 
> - C(C++?) interfacing paradigms -- ranging from ctypes, cython to classic lo-level

I recommend to toy intensively with the 'EURO SIGN' in
strings manipulations.

Py3: It may luckily work, Python may crash or fails (it raises
unicode errors on valid string!).

Py2: It is safer and solid. There is however a subtility. 3rd
party tools may consider the Euro as byte or as unicode and/or
are missinterpreting it, leading to a huge missmatch.

Example: IDLE

>>> print 'EURO' * 10
EURO  EURO  EURO  EURO  EURO  EURO  EURO  EURO  EURO  EURO
>>> print u'EURO' * 10
          
>>> # result: nothing!
>>> 


This is not specific to the Euro. I let as an
exercise to *understand* which chars are suffering
from this issue. (Py2 and Py3)

jmf

PS Go, Ruby, C#, TeX (unicode engines): never meet a problem.