you're right that they would be slower, but if I'm using a high level language I already have made the decision to have things be slower, so that I can focus on

you're right that they would be slower, but if I'm using a high level language I already have made the decision to have things be slower, so that I can focus on my logic instead of how the hardware works. I think maybe what I really want is a number type that abstracts away ints, floats, fractions, and maybe others. Then once I have it working I can optimize it to use specific types if it's not running fast enough.