I think the problem here is that "financial computing" is too broad a term to apply a rule like that blindly. If you're making products like point-of-sale syste

I think the problem here is that "financial computing" is too broad a term to apply a rule like that blindly. If you're making products like point-of-sale systems, ecommerce applications or account management, then it's basically malpractice to use floating point. The performance edge you get from them is so slight in the overall performance of the system and the damage bugs cause can be catastrophic. And it's very easy to get them wrong. It's pretty trivial in most languages to swap in decimal and/or rational types, so NOT doing so is just irresponsible. However, if you're doing things like high-frequency trading systems or machine learning stuff with massive amounts of data, then performance really does matter, and using floating point is entirely reasonable. If you're making systems like that, you're hopefully aware of the limitations of floating point and know how to use them safely.