4 ms·
Floating point is a goofy hacky kludge. > There's a reason why it's implemented in hardware in all modern computers Yah, legacy. The reason we used it origin
by carapace 4y ago
Floating point is a goofy hacky kludge.
> There's a reason why it's implemented in hardware in all modern computers
Yah, legacy.
The reason we used it originally is that computers were small and slow. Now that they're big and fast we could do without it, except that there is already so much hardware and software out there that it will never happen.
- dahfizz 4y agoWhat replacement would you propose? They all have different tradeoffs.
- carapace 4y ago(I just tried to delete my comment and couldn't because of your reply. Such is life.) ogogmad made a much more constructive comment than mine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34370745 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34370745 It really depends on your use case.
- astrange 4y agoTurning all your fixed-size numeric types into variable-sized numeric types introduces some really exciting performance and security issues. (At least if you consider DoS security.) I think fixed-point math is underrated though.