Pine Script [OUTDATED V4] Tutorial Lesson 1 Introduction Hello World!

a little hey guys this is Matt and
welcome to my trading view pine script
guide for beginners in this video series
I'm gonna cover topics regarding pine
script which is a trading view
programming language it's a very basic
programming language but it can allow
you to achieve some pretty powerful
stuff I've been using the scripting
language for a couple of years now I use
it to create trading tools that assist
in my trading process now pine script
doesn't allow you to automate your trade
execution or trade management unlike a
language like MQL but what it does allow
you to do is automate a significant part
of your trading process such as analysis
stop-loss sizes trailing stops setup
detection all kinds of things and so
basically the way I treat pine script is
I use it to be my second pair of eyes on
the market for the most part I either
use it to create scripts that send me
alerts so I can stay on top of the
market I use it to create tools to help
in my back testing process that's a big
one and overall I've just found that if
you can master the basics of pine script
you can dramatically increase your edge
over the markets we live in a world
where technological prowess and
understanding technology and and
computers and programming languages is a
very valuable skill to have now when I
first started learning how to code I was
probably 16 or 17 I used to make
computer games I'm embarrassed to admit
this but I used to make runescape
private server right up until the
creator of that game try to sue me and
shut down everything I was working on
but I had a lot of fun with that and
I've always had a passion for computer
programming
I started out learning Java which is an
intermediate programming language and I
got quite good at it but over the years
I've lost that skill because I haven't
practiced it enough but thankfully I've
moved over to Pine script now which
is very similar to a lot of programming
languages that are out there but it's
also very lightweight it's very simple
very easy to pick up very easy to learn
you don't need to be an expert in
programming to learn this stuff and I'm
excited to show you what's possible with
Pyne script in this guide so without any
further ado let's get into this stuff
I'm going to assume you have zero
experience with programming or and
specifically Pyne scripts so if you're a
little bit ahead of the beginner stages
you might want to skip this video and go
into more advanced topics but if you're
new to this stuff this is going to be
really important to learn so first of
all you want to take this mouth of yours
come all the way down here and click on
the pine editor this will open the pine
script editor and this is where the
magic happens now this is the default
script everyone will get this when you
open this for the first time and I'm
gonna run you through each line of code
here and just tell you what it does so
that you have a basic understanding of
what you're looking at so this first
line here is just a bit of legal jargon
it associates the Mozilla public license
with any code you create and basically
that's just like an open-source license
I'll go into detail about your options
later down the track in terms of keeping
your scripts private and protecting your
source code if that's something you you
want to do but for the most part if
you're anything like me you'll want to
release most of the things you create to
the public and so this this license here
will just protect you from nefarious
actors on the Internet that's just a
standard tradingview precaution and here
you'll get a little copyright symbol and
then your training view username these
these two lines here are what is
referred to as comments you see these
two forward slashes at the start of this
line what that is saying is it's telling
pine script it's telling the interpreter
or the compiler which is a fancy word
for a computer translator so all of this
English language code needs to be
translated into a language that the
computer understands that's all done for
you that's the magic of being a program
in the modern day is you don't have to
know what's going on behind the scenes
in order to code many years ago you had
to write in what's called assembly code
and it was an absolute nut you had to be
a NASA level intelligence in order to
achieve anything meaningful with that
language but today
even a monkey can create if I can create
some of the scripts I've created with
this then you'll be amazed of what
you'll be able to achieve because I'm
hardly a rocket scientist I come from a
music background I was a musician before
I became a traitor and I was a dabbler
in programming languages but now I have
a pretty firm grasp on this stuff and if
I can learn it you guys can too so I
hope that's encouraging to you but
anyway these two lines here it's telling
the computer interpreter to ignore these
lines these aren't relevant to the
script this is for human eyes only you
can use these comments to say whatever
you want for the most part it's used to
either explain what your code does or to
leave notes for yourself or you can
comment out certain lines of code that
you don't want to delete because they
might be valuable later down the line
but maybe you're dealing with some bugs
and you want to isolate what's going on
you can just comment out a couple of
lines of code and using this in there
and the script will you just ignore
those lines but for the most part you'll
be using comments to leave yourself
notes or leave notes for others so you
could say something like the script is
for teaching beginners how to use pie in
script simple as that the interpreter
the compiler will ignore this line but
you know exactly what it means and
that's very valuable when you start
creating extremely complex scripts I
have a bunch of scripts that I've
written in the past that I have no idea
what they do anymore because I didn't
comment them heavily enough so this is
something this is a good habit to get
into in the beginning this third line
here even though it starts with two
forward slashes it's technically not a
meaningless comment it's not it's not a
comment that's ignored by the compiler
but it's also not a part of my own
script code what this does is it tells
the compiler what version of Pyne script
to target so the best example I can give
is is the English language we have Old
English from many centuries ago which
you know Shakespearean type English
which isn't appropriate for today's day
and age and if you were to talk that way
you wouldn't make friends very easily
and so that's an old version of English
of the English language and today's
version is for 2.0 English 2.0 and it is
colloquial it's easy to understand
there's a lot of slang that sort of
thing
and so you could think of Old English as
version one and if you were to speak in
that language hardly anyone would
understand you but there's times where
that's appropriate because maybe you're
studying Old English or you're trying to
write something in that context
but for the most part you'd want to use
the latest version obviously and it's
the same at pine Script so pine script
has version one two three and now it has
version for each variation of these pine
script versions have different features
different syntax different syntax is
another word for grammar basically its
programming jargon for grammar so commas
brackets that this is syntax in here you
know you've got the two quotes and you
got brackets that's referred to as
programming syntax if you change this to
version 3 there'll be certain features
of pine script that you wouldn't have
access to anymore so for the most part
you can just leave this line you'll want
you'll unless you're working on an old
script that's the purpose of this is to
allow for backwards compatibility with
previous pine script versions for the
most part you're gonna want to leave
this as it is because you're going to
want to work with the latest version of
pine script obviously if you want access
to all the latest features and bells and
whistles then you're gonna want to leave
this as version 4 now moving on this is
where things get a little more
interesting a little more complex so
this first line here dictates what type
of script this is going to be now
there's two types of scripts that you
can create in pine script one is an
indicator like any other indicator you
would have seen like RSI MACD moving
averages that all falls under indicator
the other script option is a strategy
script now a strategy script is used for
back-testing strategies over historical
data automatically I'll show you a quick
example of one of the strategies scripts
I've created so here you can see that
the script places market trades so you
can see it went long here at the close
of this candle and exited for a profit
at the profit target and now adding up
all of these over about 208 trades over
the past year or two of data it had a
53% win race so 53% of these trades hit
target before they hit their stop-loss
so this is quite advanced we'll go over
this stuff much later in the course but
I'm just showing you what this strategy
script is for for the most part we're
going to be working with standard
indicators so to write a standard
indicator script you need to name this
study now this line here is sort of like
a letterhead you know on a letter you
would have something at the top of the
page explaining what the letter is for
or who it's intended for that's what
this does for the pine script compiler
it tells a pine script compiler that
this script or writing is an indicator
script not a strategy script and so the
two scripts get access to entirely
different features we don't want to be
working with any of the mock trade
features so we're just gonna leave this
as it is for the next few videos and you
can name this whatever you want I'm
gonna call this beginner script just for
an example describing this next line
will be easier basically add to chart
you'll see that now this this blind plot
is telling the script to draw the
closing price to my screen and it's that
simple
from three lines of code you can delete
these if you wanted to and this will
still work and there you go three lines
of code and we're already drawing the
beginnings of an indicator I'll show you
one more thing before I wrap this up and
then we can move on to the next video
where I'll go into much more detail
about the code part of this if you just
simply add this line of code in here oh
this is saying set the variable called
overlay to true and true this is called
a boolean it's a funny word you'll get
used to it but it's called a boolean in
programming and that's just another
fancy word just like how lawyers have
their own jargon as you would know the
financial industry has its own jargon to
make things overly complex so that only
other financial experts can understand
it programming is exactly the same
there's a bunch of jargon terms that
only other programmers will understand
and boolean is one of them all it means
is that yes or no 1 or 0 it's pretty
simple so this little line here is
saying set the inbuilt
variable overlay to 1 / yes / on /
now if I remove this from my chart save
it and then click Add to chart now we'll
draw the line it's a bit hard to see but
you can see it draws the line on to the
actual chart instead of to its own box
now this is obviously really useful for
drawing moving averages or like some of
my scripts this script is an overlay
script and it draws directly to the
chart you can see it draws a moving
average in a bunch of signals and
stoploss placements targets I'm gonna
show you guys exactly how to build
something like this and this is the
beginnings of that and so that's it this
lesson I hope you found it interesting I
hope you found it useful and strap in
because we're gonna get into much more
complicated stuff than this in the
videos to come alright thanks for
watching everyone thanks for listening
good luck with your trading good luck
with your coding and I'll speak to you
in the next video
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