Re: [cc65] Floating point support?

From: Maciej Witkowiak <ytm1elysium.pl>
Date: 2004-09-28 13:54:00
Spiro Trikaliotis dnia 28 wrz 2004 o 12:17 +0200 napisal:
> Well, I think FP is evil in most cases. *If* I know exactly what I'm
> doing, I can use them. But for this, I almost have to be a studied
> mathematician. ;-)

As an almost mathematician I have to say (probably you already know that)...

> IMHO, the problem with FP is the following: The people mostly using them
> are the people not knowledgeable enough to decide if this is
> appropriate. People who are knowledgeable try to avoid them, if this is
> possible.

This is so true. Floats should be used only by people who know what they
are doing and can design both algorithm and implementation correctly.
Otherwise possible accumulation of errors leads to gibberish results and
increasing the size of FP numbers can't help that.
Without this knowledge you can never be sure that the output from program
is correct, within acceptable (and known a priori) error range. The news
that computers are no good at counting is a bit strange anyway... :)

ytm

----------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from the list send mail to majordomo@musoftware.de with
the string "unsubscribe cc65" in the body(!) of the mail.
Received on Tue Sep 28 13:54:11 2004

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : 2004-09-28 13:54:20 CEST