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You should get acquainted with 'What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic' after which similar articles are named. I'd bet you

• saberience 8y ago
  Computer Science is a different discipline to Software Engineering. I would argue that sure, if you want to be a PhD, academic, researcher etc, in Computer Science, then reading said article might be useful. For engineers working at companies whose goal is to get product to market faster, coding ruby on rails, javascript, making web apps, websites, it's far more useful knowing your web frameworks well and being able to iterate fast, than knowing the intimate mathematical details of floating point arithmetic. Computer Science != engineering. It's like saying knowing physics is the same thing as knowing how to build a building.
  • nickpsecurity 8y ago
    The referenced work talks about floating point errors that both computer scientists and field engineers need to avoid. Many folks in both camps screw up on floating point code without such guidance. So, at least that part is potentially helpful. You just proved their point about how you'd reply, though.
    • saberience 8y ago
      Proved their point? Their point didn't make much sense. What actual engineers NEED to know about floating point numbers could be put on a single A4 page. It doesn't have to be 50 pages, where many of those pages are full of equations that 99% of engineers don't understand. My point is, because you seem to have trouble grasping this. Most real-world programmers, working at startups or bigger companies, making their WPF applications or Spring applications, or react/jquery/angular apps, or Swift IOS apps, etc, do not NEED to know 99% of this document. For most real-life cases all they need to know is "Use the decimal type if you're dealing with money" or something along those lines. Why do I know I'm correct? Because I work in an organization with 800-1000 engineers, and I know a fair few of them myself, and I bet maybe 1 person in the org has read this doc fully (and even this is a stretch). But the company stills makes billions in revenue every year like clockwork and the world keeps on spinning. Hence, this document is for theorists and academics, not for the average engineer making enterprise business applications. If it is for an engineer, it's for someone making extremely niche mathematical software or something equally arcane.
      • Stratoscope 8y ago
        > ...you seem to have trouble grasping this. Please don't insult people like that. If someone doesn't follow your reasoning, take responsibility yourself and find another way to explain the point so others may understand it more easily.
      • chrisseaton 8y ago
        I know that beginner Ruby programmers are constantly surprised by floating point arithmetic results due to not understanding how they work. I see it all the time.
        • arvinsim 8y ago
          > What actual engineers NEED to know about floating point numbers could be put on a single A4 page.
          • chrisseaton 8y ago
            I don’t think you could explain the issues sufficiently on one page. I think you'd be left with more questions and confusion than answers.
      • gdy 8y ago
        "Proved their point? Their point didn't make much sense." "My point is, because you seem to have trouble grasping this, ..." Ha-ha, the irony.
• deleted 8y ago
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