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It also depends on how many tracks you plan to play, or are playing. The whole "I can bet 20 tracks a day!" syndrome that seems to fuel many computer users is--in most cases--sheer folly. They dabble here and poke a little there, and believe their gee whiz bells-and-whistles computer apps are "handicapping the races" for them. If they were making buckets of money, I would think otherwise. What I think is that most computer users are doing as poorly as (or worse than) most pen-and-paper handicappers--with the aid of technology to make it seem they are doing something "high tech." There is nothing "high tech" about reading the output of someone else's handicapping app unless that app is generating a generous profit for you.
Playing multiple tracks is great--if you are winning. If not, you may get WAY much further ahead by concentrating on one track, and usng your own app to analyze those races. If you don't know how to "equalize" a six furlong pace line for an entry in a seven furlong (or even six-and-a-half furlong) race, that might be a good thing. If you understand how those spiffy "handicapping programs" manage (or at least superficially seem to manage) horses running at different distances at different tracks to be "comparable" in today's race, you may undersand why so many bettors lose (with or without the aid of computers).
The more you learn about the basics of programming, the more you will understand the shortcomings and deficiencies of the applications so many rely on to "pick their winners" for them. And the more you will be able to overcome those same shortcomings and deficiencies in your own (relatively simple to write) program(s). Not rocket science. Just getting past the "OMG! That looks so complicated!" factor is the biggest hurdle. The rest of it is pretty easy.
In an old issue of Racing Times, there was an article that presented the details of pace analysis--the nuts and bolts code needed--and the whole thing was like half a page. Writing a pace analysis app--even for a complete novice--is almost trivial. However, because it seems complicated, and because it is easy to generate various rankings and ratings based on pace, it forms the basis of many (if not most) "handicapping programs."
One thing that is missing from handicapping apps (as they currently exist) is the implementation of basic statistical processes to analyze races. I think one of the most valuable fringe benefits of learning to write your own apps (or to write VBA code for Access or Excel, if that is your preference) is to take a block of races and feed it to WEKA, or RapidMiner, or Anaconda3 and see what comes out.
All the impressive buzzwords like "machine learning" and "artificial intelligence" and "least squares fit" and "regression analysis" and all the rest take no more to use than a free download of a decent mining app, and a couple of mouse clicks. Take what you learn from the data mining apps and implement it in your own app. Rinse and repeat.
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