On Sunday, September 28, 2014 1:00:42 AM UTC+2, rjf wrote: > > > > On Saturday, September 27, 2014 1:21:28 PM UTC-7, Volker Braun wrote: >> >> I guess you are really happy about python3, then. >> >> $ python3 >> Python 3.4.1 (default, Sep 7 2014, 11:02:45) >> [GCC 4.9.1 20140813 (Red Hat 4.9.1-7)] on linux >> Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >> >>> 1/2 >> 0.5 >> >> I don't know what other new features it might have, but this one, it > seems, would > also interfere with Sage. Why can't it just be 1/2 ? >
Python's designers decided that rational numbers are too scary to have as builtins. An unaware user could accidentally write a program that grinds to a halt by doing a computation in which denominators grow without bound. Remember, most users cannot be assumed to know the difference between rational and floating-point arithmetic, and it's almost always better to be fast than correct by default (especially in a language that already takes 100 cycles to compute 1 + 1). As a general principle, in any computing system, it should always be the user's responsibility to go out of their way if they want correct. /s Fredrik -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
