6 ms·

My personal view is decimal arithmetic should be the default and floating-point should be the library in scripting languages. And probably also Java/C#/Go-type

• eru 10y ago
  Why? Is decimal faster than arbitrary precision? If not, arbitrary precision should probably be the default (or binary).
• richdougherty 10y ago
  My personal view is that the programmer needs to know the difference because there are important tradeoffs to consider. I do however think it should be easier to use decimal arithmetic. I've written financial apps in both Java and JavaScript and I wish both languages had native syntax and support for decimal numbers and arithmetic. JavaScript has nothing built-in and Java's BigDecimal class is clunky to use.
• adrianratnapala 10y ago
  Decimal only takes care of a subset of cases. I.e. those where the source data nicely lines up in decimal. Good for finance (although I think Britain made a mistake when it gave up the old penny and the shilling). But even there, you sometimes have to divide by numbers like 12 and 365. The point is NO representation is going to be idiot proof. So you just need to make a sufficient set of representations easy to use, and then try to teach the "idiots" what the underling issues are.
  • int_19h 10y ago
    Decimal does only take care of a subset of cases, true. But 1) it's a very common subset, and 2) when it breaks down, people generally understand how and why, because they've dealt with it elsewhere.
• milesrout 10y ago
  Nah, arbitrary-precision real arithmetic should be the default.