> [Guido] > > 1/2 yielding 0.5 is innovative? Give me a break. Pascal did this. > > Algol-60 did this. Fortran does this. And rational numbers are less > > innovative? [Tim] > Small correction: Fortran does not -- 1/2 is 0 in Fortran (same as C99's > new rules, int div always truncates). I stand corrected -- the idea is only 40 years old, not 44. :-) > So far as innovation goes, no choice on the table so far is innovative > (neither mathematically nor in programming languages), so there's no basis > for choosing there. > > Guido, *why* did ABC use rationals by default? Was that driven by usability > studies? I assume that the use of rationals for exact numbers was driven by usability studies -- like us, the ABC designers were tired of explaining the vagaries of floating point to novices. I remember that I pushed for using rationals for 1E1000 and 1E-1000, probably out of a mistaken sense of consistency. I don't think I'm responsible for 1.0 being exact -- in "The B Programmer's Handbook" (CWI, 1985) 1.0 is exact and 1E10 is approximate. In "The ABC Progammer's Handbook (Prentice Hall, 1990) these are all exact. --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
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