I can't find the talk that Stefan Karpinski gave where he said this, but it was something like:

"We've been spending a lot of time working with firms to replace K code."

Maybe the small percentage that uses K/Q/KDB+ are moving to something more readable?

Do you have a link to the talk? It would not make business sense for Stefan to spend time replacing the small percentage, if it were indeed a small percentage. Actually, kdb+ is dominant everywhere on wall st, and the company mentioned in that article are retiring an old, discontinued version of k, not kdb+; perhaps that is the firm Stefan refers to? The debate about readability of k code has become boring - if you learn the language, you'll find it perfectly readable, elegant even.

> Do you have a link to the talk?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRWZBWwBVR0 (I can't listen to the audio now so I'm not sure how much I misparaphrased.) And, you're right, I shouldn't have conflated KDB+ with K.

> if you learn the language, you'll find it perfectly readable, elegant even.

Just comparing K to something like Python.. Though, personally, it only became (somewhat) readable after playing with APL and J for a year.

thank you for the link. It's at 12:28 in the talk where he mentions the firm is Conning, who used k for financial simulations for insurance. In this talk, he doesn't suggest he is working with other firms to replace k/q/kdb+.

Based on random sampling of those that contact me about such transitions, the latter is somewhat true. A couple have mentioned Julia but I wouldn't say it's the majority.

Definitely possible. Though I'm not sure why those firms wouldn't switch to a more mainstream stack. Most talented quants I've met prefer to code in Matlab, R, and Python, C++. VBA is of course inescapable in the life of a financier.

When competing for talent and desperate for maintainability, companies are unlikely to introduce tools that are not the industry standard.