[dagenix]

> Let's move from an over-engineered approach to an under-engineered one.

The article says this to deride C++s implementation as being too complicated because it supports ranges such as [-3,17] and then promptly goes on to discuss how a modulo based implementation is very biased if the upper end of the range is above 2^31. It's not really clear why the former use case is unimportant but the latter isn't.

It just goes to show that one person's niche use case is another person's main use case. I wish people would just avoid the judgemental term "over engineered" and instead focus on matching appropriate algorithms to appropriate use cases.

[vinkelhake]

The comment there is not about [-3, 17] being an obscure output range from a distribution. It is that the distribution must be able to handle a random generator that outputs numbers in that range.

I think there's a small error there in that the output type of UniformRandomBitGenerator must be actually be unsigned. The larger point still stands though. It is possible to write a conforming UniformRandomBitGenerator that has an output range of [3, 17] and it falls on the distribution to handle this.

[dagenix]

Ah, good call. I did slightly misinterpret what was being said. I think my overall point still stands, though.

[WorkLifeBalance]

The modulo approach is biased for all ranges which don't divide the full range but only a small amount of bias at small ranges rather than a large amount of bias at large ranges.

[dagenix]

I don't disagree - I just very much hate the phrase "over engineered" as I think it never adds anything to a discussion.