Hello
Very old programmer here - used to use an early predecessor to Q (A+) extensively back in the early 1990s at Morgan Stanley. Been a very long time since I have coded anything properly (since I now run my own asset manager) but I have asked the tech group in my firm to evaluate Q/kdb+ for some projects we are working on because I remember how effective A+ was at the kind of problem we are trying to solve. Because of this I thought I would roll back the years and have a play (on my PC) so I can help my team - since none of them have used a langauage like this before and they are skeptical. However I'm embarassed to say I can't even work out how to install the sucker. Sorry if this isn't the right place to ask - I promise to have some much more serious topics to discuss if I can cross this little hurdle.
I've downloaded the 32 bit free version (so I have a zip file) and the 64 bit connected version (so I have another zip file). I've extracted them - so sitting on my desktop I have a folder called q and one called w64, If I go into q/w32 there is a q executable. If I type q in the command prompt when I'm in the directory I get this:
C:\Users\Paul\Desktop\q\w32>q
KDB+ 3.6 2019.04.02 Copyright (C) 1993-2019 Kx Systems
w32/ 32()core 4095MB Paul desktop-e81sj5n 192.168.0.63 NONEXPIRE
'c:/q/q.k. OS reports: The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect.
0::
`c:/q/q.k
C:\Users\Paul\Desktop\q\w32>
Similarly:
C:\Users\Paul\Desktop\w64>q
KDB+ 3.6 2019.04.30 Copyright (C) 1993-2019 Kx Systems
w64/ 32()core 65415MB Paul desktop-e81sj5n 192.168.0.63 00330-80831-17856-AA977
'k4.lic
C:\Users\Paul\Desktop\w64>
I also downloaded something called develper for windows - if I try and run install it doesn't know how to work.
And what is a decent environment to programme this sucker in? I used to use something called emacs on a Sun Workstation - no idea what a good editor is for a PC
Thanks - and sorry for the embarassing novice question
Paul
