would you share how long did it take you?
although i doubt anyone here did it… just want to see if there is really people out there
I’m a professional programmer. Leaned back in the 80s in college so that’s what I do to make a living. Unfortunately I don’t program in the mql4 EA language, but all programming languages have some things in common such as logic structures so once you learn one, it’s not that hard to learn another. The main differences are syntax. So I am busy teaching myself. and fortunately because of my experience it shouldn’t take long.
I don’t know if I’m allowed to post a link but I will give it a try.
I’ll leave off the http part so it is not directly click-able.
here is a tutorial, I won’t say it’s a really good one but it’s the best I found so far.
scroll down a little ways and you will see lessons 1 through 18
you could probably go through each of those lessons in less than an hour.
Yes I did. Took less time that I expected to do what I wanted but I spent a long time resisting it, thinking I could get away without it. I ended up farming a lot out to 3rd parties, but ultimately the core of my strat is all mine. It’s safer in the long run if you understand the code yourself.
I share the same resistance. Now I am looking for alternatives to programming (somehow I didn’t imagine computer programming as a forex necessity). Ive been doing manual testing, but its slow and tedious, and sometimes I wonder if I spent the time learning programming that I would be better off right now.
Ahhhh!! 
Lucky you!! 
I also learnt Fortran 4 back in the 1970’s when computers filled whole rooms.
My brother in law is a professional programmer from back in the days when Windows was never thought of.
Funny, he hates the Windows operating system.
So for me, I am learning my way around the CTL system of GFT.
I have found it quite easy to use and have written a number of indicators already.
Yes, I see the matter about syntax.
Get one comma out of place and your program does not load.
I very much like the verification feedback that the CTL program gives if you go wrong.
It directs you exactly to your mistake - could not be easier!! 
Thankyou for the link and everyone for sharing their experience. I would definitely want to try it out(programming) once i am good at manual trading.
getting good at manual trading is a prerequisite to programming. After all if you don’t have a working manual strategy then what are you going to program?
I’m still a newbie myself and definately on a learning curve!
Tymen, ! I remember fortran ! and cobol and pascal etc. even dabbled in some assembler language.
My manual strategy right now is trying to catch trends by comparing two moving averages, but rather than wait for them to cross I try to catch the short term average as it starts to turn, seems to work pretty good except for when price stays in a narrow range for a while. If I could figure out how to filter that out then a profitable EA might be possible.
I learned programming back in the early 80s when PCs were Commodore 64s, Vic-20s, TRS-80s, and TI-4s, and Apple IIs. Pascal was in there. Maybe some Fortran in high school CompSci. A little bit of assembly. Got up to C around college.
I interviewed Jack Schwager (Market Wizards author) once upon a time ('92 or '93). In response to my question about advice he would offer up he suggested learning C programming for system testing and development.
Thanks for the link. Thinking of learning it myself. Would make backtesting ideas so much easier.
I’d agree with the posts above - get manual trading right first and then learn programming (if you think you can mechanise the strategy). A good half way house is Ninjatrader because you can create strats without programming (drop-downs). Your chances are slim of finding anything useful without trading experience, but it’ll keep you thinking while you’re trading.
As for manual testing - been there! It’s so painfully slow and really, really easy to screw up - but you know all this already.