That's cool. I'm surprised you say that finance always takes a backseat to writing amazing code, though.

In my experience, traders don't want cool new snazzy Google Wave. They want Excel. They don't want cool new Web 2.0 streaming quotes/risk calculations/portfolio calculations, they want VBA macros in Excel.

Even if you are working in actual trading/strategy area and write up your backtester with Python. They want your P/L in Excel. To implement the strategy though, they want it in C++.

Wall Street: Excel for life!