I am trying to decide if it is worth supporting my NinjaScript add-on in versions of NinjaTrader 8 going forward, as the first release of NinjaTrader Desktop was on March 4, 2023, which was almost 3 years ago. (https://ninjatrader.com/support/helpGuides/nt8/8_1_1.htm)
Do you think that there are a lot of NinjaTrader users still on NinjaTrader 8 and who don’t want to upgrade to NinjaTrader Desktop?
If you had to guess, could the number of NinjaTrader 8 users be even 5% of the number of NinjaTrader Desktop users?
It wasn’t a typo on my part, but a different way of categorizing the versions of NinjaTrader whose major version is 8.
While the major version of “NinjaTrader Desktop” is 8, when I wrote “NinjaTrader 8” I was referring to the way that NinjaTrader, Inc. would have referred to their NinjaTrader Windows application before the first version of NinjaTrader Desktop, which they would have called “NinjaTrader 8”.
Once NinjaTrader, Inc. released the first version of NinjaTrader to have a minor version of 1, i.e. 8.1.x.y), NinjaTrader, Inc. started calling the versions of NinjaTrader with major version 8 and minor version 1 “NinjaTrader Desktop”.
So to rephrase my question to be accurate even from a pure major/minor version perspective, my question is then:
I am trying to decide if it is worth supporting my NinjaScript add-on in versions of NinjaTrader 8.0 going forward, as the first release of NinjaTrader 8.1 (a.k.a. “NinjaTrader Desktop”) was on March 4, 2023, which was almost 3 years ago.
Do you think that there are a lot of NinjaTrader users still on NinjaTrader 8.0 and who don’t want to upgrade to NinjaTrader 8.1 (also called NinjaTrader Desktop)?
If you had to guess, could the number of NinjaTrader 8.0 users be even 5% of the number of NinjaTrader 8.1 (a.k.a. “NinjaTrader Desktop”) users?
Personally, I’d focus on supporting recent versions. Users who prefer to stay on older releases will need to continue using the app version that supports them.
A potential downside of continuing to support NT 8.0.28.0 is that you won’t be able to take advantage of the latest improvements in Agile.NET for protecting your code.
Great point @QuantKey_Bruce, thank you. Thanks also to @WaleeTheRobot and @bltdavid for sharing your thoughts on this. I wish there was some way to know what percentage of NinjaTrader users are on 8.0.x.y vs. the percentage of users on 8.1.x.y to help vendors make business decisions like the one I am grappling with but NinjaTrader, Inc, might not even know this themselves or if they did they might not want to share the numbers publicly.
@Quagensia I would recommend that you focus on support for the current, supported build. While there is a constituency of people who are using 8.0.28.0, it’s a small one, and a highly technical one, and they don’t tend to be typical customers for a vendor. If you’re in the business of working with end user traders, you’ll want those traders to be supported, and supportable, and if every time they contact NinjaTrader with a problem they’re told they need to update to the current build before they can look into it further, that’s not really a good situation. It’s just the right business decision to focus your efforts on what’s current and supported because the end user experience is the one you want them to have.
I believe @QuantKey_Bruce is referring to using Agile.net as integrated with NT’s export where code is compiled into an assembly and secured with Agile.net in one shot without needing to launch the Agile.net application separately.
I’m still on 8.0.28 on my development system (let’s not get into the why here, but I have good reasons - will probably upgrade soon though). I recently upgraded Agile.net to version 7.0.0.30.
My export method is probably not the typical process that most vendors follow. I export from NT with no protection. Then combine the unsecured NT DLL with other required 3rd party DLLs manually using the Agile.net application and apply security at the same time. This seems to work fine. I have a beta package out to beta testers that was created this way and there haven’t been any issues running it on NT 8.1.x.
I’m not sure if the inline process will or will not work with NT 8.0.x and Agile 7.0.x. I’m just sharing what I tried and it appears to work fine.
And before I get yelled at, let me clarify that I’m not suggesting that people should be running older versions of software.
Understood. Personally, I still use NT 8.0.28.0 on two machines as well. But, for vendor customers, that’s not really a deciding use case. And all of my development has moved to the current build and I stay current in order to assure that everything I do is up-to-date.
