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by DannyB2 2542 days ago
Considering that back in the 1980's we figured out that you should use some kind of 'integer' or 'bcd' based type for financial calculations; it is astonishing that by almost 2020 people are making these same mistakes over and over again.

A 64-bit integer is big enough to express the US National Debt in Argentine Pesos.

2 comments

> it is astonishing that by almost 2020 people are making these same mistakes over and over again.

It's actually logical: the number of developers doubles roughly every 5 years. It means that half of the developers have less than 5 years of experience. If they don't teach you this in school (university), you will have to learn from someone who knows, but chances are the other developers are as clueless as you.

OMG! The Eternal Eternal September.
It's not enough to represent one US cent in original Zimbabwean dollars though as of 2009. Although those 'first' dollars hadn't been legal for quite some time, the currency having gone through three rounds of massive devaluation and collapse, totalling something like 1x10^30 by then.