[pjc50]

Numbers are hard. They can be made to look easy, but that just sweeps the corner cases under the rug.

Probably what people want is a Number type providing integer bignums for those situations when you don't want to care, a set of "machine integer" types with controllable overflow handling, IEEE floating point, a Rational/Fraction so you can handle 1/3 correctly, a Money type with controllable rounding, and COBOL-style "picture" types.

Oh, and complex numbers, and matrix types of all of the above.