On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 5:30 PM, Nicolas Cellier < [email protected]> wrote:
> > I guess you gonna miss pretty soon those imperfect inexact Float of > the unreasonnable people. > Nicolas please read what I wrote: If you're defining the default behavior of numbers in the system, the principle of "thou shall not commit premature optimization" should come into play. If you're that desperately in need of floating point speed, you're also probably capable of applying that and other optimization techniques accordingly, as befits your problem. The case of the core drawing engine is a special case. You would optimize this case specially, knowing full well that it is a critical system loop that affects the performance of everything else. But turning around and saying that because this core loop requires optimization, that this optimization technique should be the default is a total non sequitur. One special case does not define what the general case should be. When making a fundamental design decision as to what a sane default is, you need to look at what the non-expert using the system will expect. Saying that "you should know IEEE 754 float math" isn't helpful. Skilled professionals make mistakes with floating point math every day. Telling a child in grammar school that their program doesn't work because they don't understand IEEE 754 math is equally absurd. Design decisions should not be driven by implementation optimization requirements. Doing so only places the incidental preferences of the system implementors over the needs of those who will use it. Dave -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- http://blog.dloh.org/
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