On Jul 9, 2009, at 2:58 PM, Hernan Wilkinson wrote: > So, Stef, what do we do? :-) > I think we have discussed very interesting things is this thread. My > conclusions are: > > 1) Nicolas made a change to avoid confusion when comparing "exact > numbers" with "inexact numbers" (among others) > 2) This change surprised some people (me in the first place) because > it is not how other Smalltalks behave, it is a change in the > philosophy of Smalltalk and thus it logically generates disagreements
I do not think that this is a change in philosophy. Clearly you cannot hide the limited nature of float compare to their intellectual/math counterpart. > 3) It is clear that Floats are needed due to performance issues, and > it is also clear that when performance is not a problem Smalltalk > numbers should behave as close as possible (if not equal to) > arithmetic. > > So, I devise these paths: > 1) Leave things as they are now in the latest Pharo image, and wait to > see if Nicola's change affects real applications (not just tests as it > was my case) > 2) Same as 1 but making float equals work only when comparing > between floats Why not. I would like to have a consistent behavior: not true if this is 0.5 and false in 0.3 > 3) Change the Number hierarchy and make a clear distinction between > exact numbers and inexact numbers. Make exact numbers behave as one > expects in real math > 4) Go back to how things were yeap > I think they are pretty much the options... > My vote goes for 1 right now. To make 2 we need to experiment more and > see how it behaves. I really like 3, I'd love to see that implemented > in Smalltalk but doing that model is not easy, it will take time (hey, > you have a research track there!), and 4 does not make sense after > Nicolas explanations We learned all something today :) So this is a positive experience. > > Bye, > Hernan. > > > On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 6:04 AM, Andres > Valloud<[email protected]> wrote: >> Stephane, >>> Computer float numbers are NOT math float numbers. Let us accept it. >>> >>> >> >> I agree with your sentiment. At the risk of being overly precise, >> I'd >> state that computer float numbers are not our everyday decimal >> numbers. >> I'd avoid the reference to "math" because computer floating point >> numbers do have significant math behind them. >> >> Andres. >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Pharo-project mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project >> > > _______________________________________________ > Pharo-project mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project _______________________________________________ Pharo-project mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project
