Strong typing is not a mistake or a curse. Use a more advanced language that supports stuff like generics, or model your problem with the appropriate type. If y

Strong typing is not a mistake or a curse. Use a more advanced language that supports stuff like generics, or model your problem with the appropriate type. If you need real numbers you need real numbers, not some weird mix. I don't think it is good to just let it arbitrarily switch between int and float, that can hide bugs or mistakes. Computers are much stricter about what is what. In mathematics people are on the surface less strict, a lot of maths is done up to some sort of isomorphisms/forgetful functor, but we are smart enough to fix up potential type errors. Doing maths, as a mathematician is using a much more expressive language that takes care of some details for you. For 2 \pi, \pi ( ) is a program, an infinite list, a monad, and we implement it as a lazy calculation sometimes we can extract numbers up to a certain accuracy. 2 \pi is 2 \pi or if you know more, you can write it as another sequence, or pull the 2. As for integer * float, well what is this supposed to actually mean to a computer? Integers are not subsets of the reals. Integers are not sets, the reals are not sets. There is a representation of the integers in the reals represented as a set however. There is however a way to act Z on R. It even seems like a very natural operation. However we are doing maths, using our powerful reasoning abilities. Now it is your job to explain all these differences to a computer. Pretty tricky, so how about we just make things more restrictive. If you need real(integer) * real how about you just use that.