Peter Byrne

BestX wanted to raise funds in memory of our colleague Peter Byrne. We would love to get a sun dial in the family garden for the family as Peter was passionate about theoretical physics and we would love to help the sons encourage the same in them. Anything left over, the family would like funds to be donated to the Cardiac Risk in the young charity (Cry.ie).

If we can try to explain what Peter did at BestX as a KDB programmer, first we should explain a little about KDB. KDB is one of the most challenging programming languages to work with but also one of the most rewarding because the difference between an average solution to a problem and a good one is so clear and easy to measure in terms of performance. With KDB, while a naive solution to a problem might take minutes or even hours to return a result, there is often a better approach that could solve the same problem in seconds. Now we all know Peter was super smart, but it’s tough for us to convey just how exceptionally good at his job he was. His insight into how to find elegant, efficient solutions to the most challenging problems was truly astonishing and unparalleled in our experience as a software engineer.

The KDB architecture Peter created works at the very foundation of the BestX platform but to say it helps us retrieve values and aggregate statistics over large quantities of data doesn't do justice to the work he has done here and his contribution to the team. It has been an education, an inspiration and very much a pleasure and a privilege to have worked with Peter and he will be very much missed.

Peter was widely regarded as one of the best KDB developer our Engineers had ever worked with, having had a huge impact on our Equities product and the KDB infrastructure that underpins the entire BestX platform. Although his home base in Ireland meant that he was not often physically present in our day to day business, the impact he has had on the company and the colleagues he worked with has been enormous.