[SFjulie1]

Sorry to tell you, but 99% of so called expert developers don't understand this. For them a real number is a a float (exactly). And I have been fired for saying e-commerce should be done with fixed point numbers. (we do + - * / at most) Headaches really comes with multi currency web sites since conversion brings incommesurability. They also told me that since we are using linear equation most of the time (are we?), errors should dissipates like the breeze (they also kind of say badlands are so statiscally rare that we sould not care).

Anyway, in real job as a dev, when I made a moving average it was the most impressive math I done, and when I was resorting to ifft (convolution with a hammer function) I was told it should not be used because it was unmaintainable because no one understood.

I have been so ... hammered down by computer engineer so sure of themselves that I learnt to shut my mouth to keep my job.

Who really read this?

I love it, but I never did any serious brainy stuff as a dev.

[ntoronto]

Ugh. It's shameful when people use wrong arguments about mathematics to oppress. I really wish you the best.

This article first appeared in "Computing in Science and Engineering" magazine, so its audience is mainly scientists in various fields who use floating point in their research. Because of that breadth, I tried to make it as accessible as possible, while teaching enough floating-point principles to make debugging make sense.

I honestly hope that everyone who uses floating point reads this.

[SFjulie1]

Computer science on the field is ugly.

I went in university to learn physics, so I have my geometry and numerical analysis basic understanding.

I honestly thinks people who learnt it has a cursus for graduating did not care, and that they actually don't understand their difficulties even though they learnt about it. They don't see it is a float.

One of the other misconception I have to fight with is what is time.

CS engineer believe in a perfect synchronized time and timestamp that are monotonicly growing the same everywhere with a 10-9 precision and rely on that for distributed systems. My guts (and general relativity too I guess) are telling me they are wrong.

But since I am stuck reimplementing a bubble sort for phone numbers I don't quite have the time to work on it. I have to live with my tingling intuitions telling me I am either an overpessimistic ass being a pain for my colleague that is becoming obsolete by lack of studying, or the whole industry seems getting more magic oriented than science oriented.

Anyway, like a lot of people I am getting inadapted out there.

At least, I have spare time to work on game of life and complex systems... sometimes, and I have a lovely caring wife, so I am happy either way :)