From: "Shot (Piotr Szotkowski)" <shot@...>
Date: 2009-11-16T01:14:24+09:00
Subject: Re: Trajectories

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Marnen Laibow-Koser:

> Yeah, I tried longer runs as well and saw larger differences.
> I question the applicability of those to actual programs, though;
> even computationally intensive programs are going to be spending lots
> of time doing things other than number crunching.

To clarify, I also believe BigDecimals should be used by default (when
one=E2=80=99s serious about the results=E2=80=99 acccuracy) until they are =
actually
determined to be a performance bottleneck. There even was a motion
to make them the language default, but the resolution was that
the performance cost was way too large, and that most (if not all)
other general-purpose languages default to IEEE floats for exactly
this reason.

> Besides, what good are fast calculations if they're wrong?

Well, if they=E2=80=99re slightly wrong, but a couple of times faster, they
might be good enough; the previous example in this thread was IMHO
a good one =E2=80=93 you don=E2=80=99t usually need accurate float arithmet=
ics in
action games, but you do often care for the performance gain.

=E2=80=94 Shot, who wouldn=E2=80=99t mind if Ruby defaulted to BigDecimals =
:)
--=20
=E2=80=98Is it just me, or does anyone else here find it vaguely
unsettling that you get your theology from Star Trek?=E2=80=99
=E2=80=98Yeah, he should get it from B5 like us normal people.=E2=80=99
                     [Anthony DeBoer, Paul Tomblin, asr]

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