Does anyone recommend any good books on programming? I recently opened account with GFT. The have a program Chart Studios where you can program strategies then back test them. I have no programming experience, but ask a friend and they said C or C++ is the basic programming language. Does anyone here use GFT and the programming too. Any Advice would be appreciated.
You are going to find it tricky, C or c++ or C# is the one I have avoided for 20+ years, I can program in ASP, Visual BASIC, Java and PHP, C I think is the hardest, have a look at some Javascript off the internet just to get an idea what programming is all about, but also consider the Metatrader platform, I have done a LOT of scripts on this and it’s reasonably easy to get the hang of.
Forget trying to learn a programming language unrelated to the one in GFT Chart Studio. Learn the actual language you’ll be using!
Chart Studio uses a custom language they call CTL. If you know about programming it is a bit like Pascal.
Lucky for you GFT have a 56 page PDF all about their CTL language on their website. You’ll find it here - gftuk.com/documents/manuals/chart_studio.pdf
Have a read through and see if you understand it. If not then you could look at a beginners guide to Pascal which should give you the foundations you need for CTL.
agree with previous replies. C and its variation are not the easiest language to get started.
It’s best if you learn the language that you’ll be using. No point beating around the bush and wasting your time. CTL is based on Pascal, so if you can’t find enough resources to learn CTL by, you can go with learning Pascal first.
Learning to program can be tedious, so it’s best if you have an actual problem that you want to solve and then figure out how to do it. I’d suggestion formulating a simple problem and solution in your head and go from there. Take it one step at a time and just dive right in.
Thank you guys!
Greetings [B]rfed[/B]!! 
I trade with GFT and program as well.
I am just the man you are looking for.
Meanwhile thanks to those who stated that CTL is similar to Pascal, that is something I did not know.
You program Pascal? Man! I haven’t done that language since college. I once wrote a Pascal program that would do my Cobol asignments for me LOL. My attempt at artificial intelligence.
I am sure your programming skills are vastly superior to mine!! :o :o
I may need to tap into your knowledge at some point.
You will also be able to point out things in my new upcoming thread.
I’m using dealbook and had a look at Chart studio. It’s a bit greek to me but I don’t have mych programming experience outside of basic HTML/PHP/MySQL.
There’s quite a helpful forum with some good examples though.
I really wish I could code an ADX indicator and some way of applying MA’s to a MACD chart.
One thing I am not impressed with is that my live micro account has a limited amount of indicators available and if I want more I have upgrade to a larger account.
I’m looking at switching to an MT4 broker just so i can use the indicators and EA’s I need to trade my system as Dealbook is a bit restrictive. Which is a shame because GFT are a great broker from what I’ve seen so far - if only they let me trade through MT4 
I was thinking this might be the start of a new thread for using Chart Studio. We can all share and help each other with the programming. I have been creeping around this sight for about two years reading more than posting. Currently I use Oanda but opened an account with GFT, because of the back testing features. Below is a link about Pascal (thank you wibble1234 I thought that CTL was based on C) programming that I started to read.
So here is my first question. The program below is saying, If the 18 day MA crosses the 30 MA on the up side buy one lot. If the 18MA crosses on the downside sell one lot. My question is how would you program it to say If the 18MA crosses the 30MA on the up side buy one lot and sell the position if after the trade it moves against you 30 pips. Basically I want to test a strategy using stop losses.
strategy sample_ema2
input period1=18, period2=30, lots=1;
vars ma1(series), ma2 (series);
begin
ma1:= ema(close,period1);
ma2:=(close, period2);
if crossup (ma1,ma2) then buy(lots);
if crossdown(ma1,ma2) then sell(lots);
end.
Sorry to interrupt, but all this talk of Pascal and COBOL takes me back to my college days, I passed my course, but it was afterwards I really learned programming, I was in too much of a daze.
Happy Daze. 
If anyone is interested this is the forum for Chart Studio:
Forex Trading Software - Online Currency Trading Software - Chart Studio� Forum
Some nice custom indicators and EA’s for Dealbook360 thet people are sharing