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On Friday, February 20, 2004, at 08:32 AM, Joe Pluta wrote:


 At the same
time, should everyone who uses exponentiation know floating point?  I
don't think that's reasonable.

Of course it is reasonable! It is reasonable to expect programmers to know the tools they use--not just guess at the behaviour. It is reasonable to check the documentation when:
a) a new feature is added to the language
b) a new feature is used for the first time


In both cases a programmer would have been aware that floating-point was used for exponentiation. For example, both COBOL and RPG support a MOVE operation but they behave differently. Or RPG use bounded arrays but C doesn't. It is reasonable to expect that a programmer in both languages knows the behavioural differences and that a programmer using one language does not make assumptions based on the behaviour of the other.

Floating-point behaviour should have been learnt in PGMG 101 and even if forgotten should cause a programmer to think "Hmm, floating-point. I've heard weird things happen with that. I'd better investigate a bit".

I actually never used the word "error".

I never said you did. I put the word error in quotes to indicate that the behaviour might be perceived as an error when it's not. At worst it is a bad design choice but that choice may have made perfect sense to the developer at the time it was made.


Regards,
Simon Coulter.
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