Yes, the material in the books gives you a good insight in what is required for developing an automated system. Problem is that you can't use the example systems from the books. They are normally not profitable, even though they appear so at a first glance.

System ideas come from thinking about which type of market inefficiency - cycles, season, gaps, trends etc. - could be exploited, and then using available tools for detecting this inefficiency in a price curve and generating trade signals. There are many different inefficiencies and any of them can be detected in many different ways, so there's an unlimited number of profitable strategies that could be developed.