A Newbie's Appeal to the Experts

First, let me express my deep respect and gratitude for those who have built AmiBroker and offer help here. Thank you for creating and supporting this invaluable resource. Your years of dedicated work have produced the top application in its class and kept it there. High praise to you. Well done!

Second, as a newbie with zero coding experience, I’d like to share that one of the downsides of being an expert is it’s easy to forget what it’s like to not know.

As a successful business owner, I’m neither stupid nor lazy. But new to coding and AmiBroker, and having put dozens of hours into this, I remain confused and overwhelmed.

I have spent a lot of time with the AmiBroker written and video tutorials, AFL language reference, User’s Guide, Community Forum, and third-party YouTube videos. All of them necessarily assume a certain level of coding knowledge and experience. But it’s a level ignorant newbies like me have not yet attained (ignorant as in unaware, not as an insult).

What I need, and am not finding, is a general template I can use to understand basic AFL formulas. That is, a template or framework that names the basic elements that make up an AFL script, and details the typical flow from start to end.

To newbies like me, AmiBroker presents a large and overwhelming list of concepts. Because I know virtually nothing about any of them, each seems to be equally important. An introductory template or framework would help me quickly understand which are fundamental, and how where to begin.

Phrases in such a help document might include:

  • To write AFL code you need to understand these X fundamental concepts ....

  • For any formula, begin with/by ...

  • Different formulas are created for different purposes. These include ...

  • For the code to work, certain elements must be used in a certain order .

Again, high praise and respect to the AmiBroker experts. My simple request is that you take pity on someone as ignorant as me, and try to remember what it’s like to not know.

If the template I seek is there and I have so far missed it, I apologize for this unnecessary post. If it does not yet exist, there are likely thousands of newbies out there would benefit from one.

With or without such a template, I’ll figure this out and eventually come to master AmiBroker to my level of satisfaction. Like I said, I’m neither lazy nor stupid. I have cracked tougher nuts than this, and I will persist toward this important goal.

That said, there is likely a significant number of people who avoid or give up on AmiBroker when they become quickly overwhelmed like I did. An introductory formula-writing template may help AmiBroker keep a good number of them on board that you would otherwise lose. A special section in the help literature and/or on your website for ignorant newbies may help draw more people in and boost your sales.

Such questions are perfectly answered by ChatGPT. You can feed it with AmiBroker Users Guide
and it can easily answer all your questions immediately, see: ChatGPT is utterly amazing and scary at the same time - #95 by Tomasz

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That's a good tip about uploading the User's Guide to ChatGPT before asking questions. I tried ChatGPT numerous times without doing this. It made numerous errors and led me down many false paths. Uploading the User's Guide makes a HUGE difference. It's the difference between talking to a self-centered drunk and a helpful professor.

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ChatGPT tells me I must upload the User's Guide with every new chat I start regarding AmiBroker. That's a small price to pay for the accurate responses I am now receiving.

Thanks again for the tip. Happy newbie here!

Everyone learns differently, but in my opinion one of the very most important things to understand is how arrays (vectors) are used in AFL and how AmiBroker processes them. Ask ChatGPT to help you master that, and you'll be on you way.

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There is a AFL Code Wizard module. You have to purchase it. As you read the manual try to code your ideas. Then you can ask the Code Wizard to generate the code from the same idea. Compare your code to Code Wizard. You can see where you make mistake and how to improve your coding skills.

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Beside of the ChatGPT, i find that Grok 3 is far better to modify or write afl code. Generally i used Grok 3 to modifiy or updated by existing code, it save me a lot of time and simple human error. It is also very very good to find debug in code. %100 sure that it will very helpful for newbie afl code

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This thread:

has a lot of resources (some free, some paid).

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Thank you, NorgateData. I previously looked at all the third-party services listed there. As I said in my first post, all of them necessarily assume a certain level of coding knowledge. But as a raw newbie with no such knowledge, I had a difficult time grasping their content.

Tomaz's suggested ChatGPT approach is working great at my entry level. Uploading the AmiBroker User's Guide to ChatGPT before I ask questions there fundamentally transformed ChatGPT from a near-useless resource to a truly helpful one.

While I have much to learn and many hours to invest to learn it, Tomaz/s ChatGPT suggestion has transformed me from a frustrated and aimless beginner to one now confident and on a clear path.

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Some nice suggestions here. While a bit dated at this point, "Quantitative Trading Systems" by Howard Bandy gives some enlightening info on processes for strategy development, not just code, and then how to use AmiBroker to do this. Highly recommended.

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