2009/8/15 kend <[email protected]>: > Schwab,Wilhelm K >> You seem determined to have the behavior of Float change when the complex >> package is installed, and there are various objections to that from >> multiple people; those objections are well founded. > > My interpretation of the responses I have received is "Change breaks History, > we have a strong history" not "these suggestions are worse approximations to > mathematics". > > I accept the first reasoning for Squeak. Squeak supports history (backward > compatible) at the expense of, e.g., ANSI Smalltalk closures. > > Pharo has a slightly different goal set and speaks of "reinventing Smalltalk". > > I believe the changes I suggested better approximate mathematics and logic. > i disagree. As i said earlier, a square root function result is not defined for arguments less than zero in real (R) set. This is strictly mathematical behavior, same as division does not defines a value for zero.
Just think about, how many code i could break, if i return an Infinity (or something like this) as a result of division by zero instead of signaling error. > I would prefer to see arguments that I am doing bad math, not that "doing > better math is a change that we don't want". > You not doing bad math or better math, you doing _different_ math. Both could live in parallel, but you proposing to scratch one in favor of other. > Once again, the discussion here implies that the Complex class should be > removed from Pharo-Core into its own Package. > > ====== > BTW, I fail too see the logic that (-4 sqrt) raises an exception but that (-3 > ln) answers a NaN. I would expect both cases to raise exceptions. Any hints > on why this is the case? Perhaps both cases should raise and exception with > the option to load a/the Complex package? > ====== > Good that you noticed such inconsistency. I agree that in both cases these functions should behave similar as well as any other functions which argument(s) lying out of the range(s) defined for them. But again, the behavior of such functions should not change in the presence/absence of Complex numbers. > Thanks again for your thoughtful consideration and input, > -KenD > > _______________________________________________ > Pharo-project mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project > -- Best regards, Igor Stasenko AKA sig. _______________________________________________ Pharo-project mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project
