My experience from graphics programming is that, yes, this is a subdomain where you want both the ability to shorten your functions with overloading and the abi

My experience from graphics programming is that, yes, this is a subdomain where you want both the ability to shorten your functions with overloading and the ability to make your underlying types dynamic. There's a lot of fiddly-bit optimization in that space that is both necessary and much easier to do if you can transition quickly and smoothly from one type to another without having to boil an ocean of declarations. Granted, you then have the problem of having to deal with overflow on different types, but that's just one of the ocean liner of problems you've signed up for if you're working in the graphics space. May the odds be ever in your favor. ;)