[Tainnor]

But "safe" and "unsafe" are not a binary thing.

Maybe for LOB applications, it would be better if languages defaulted to arbitrary precision arithmetic. But scientific computing is also a huge field that often uses the same languages and there, arbitrary precision is often the completely wrong tool, e.g. it would make certain key algorithms (like Gaussian elimination) exponential.

I feel like this is just one of these things that developers should know about so they can make the correct choice, just like DB indices.

[lmm]

> arbitrary precision is often the completely wrong tool, e.g. it would make certain key algorithms (like Gaussian elimination) exponential.

Sure, but even in science taking a lot of time to deliver a result, or failing to deliver one at all, is much safer than silently delivering the wrong result. There's the concept of fail-stop if you want a rigorous approach to safety. There's no analogous safety model that says silent overflow is the safe option.