RE: Strange result with exponents...

["Joe Pluta" <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: Simon Coulter
> 
> > Rremember, a lot of us dinosaurs don't have the benefit of a CS
degree,
> > since when we were coming up there was no such thing.
> 
> Well I don't have a CS degree nor a Maths degree but I know about
> floating-point numbers so I think your argument is specious.

Hmm.  Even after a complete and thorough explanation on floating point,
not one person yet understands why 5.2 works different than 5.1, so as
far as I can tell it's your argument that we should all understand
floating point that is specious.   But hey, that's just me.


> I think part of a programmer's job is
> to be familiar with some things outside their usual realm. When Floats
> were added to RPG it would be reasonable to expect a bit of
> investigation about what they were and whether they would be useful
but
> it seems most RPG programmers stayed with what they learned in RPG II
> hence all the confusion about B versus I data types.

Most programmers I know actually spend their time programming.  If
they're going to learn something new, it would be ILE or HTML or Java,
not floating point.  I've programmed for 25 years in over a dozen
languages on ten different platforms and never once needed a floating
point number.  But hey, I'm specious <grin>.


Joe (Proud New Papa) Pluta
http://www.plutabrothers.com/PBDWeb/images/AJPluta.gif