On Friday, 20 May 2016 at 22:22:57 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
On 5/20/2016 5:36 AM, Tobias M wrote:
Still an authority, though.
If we're going to use the fallacy of appeal to authority, may I
present Kahan who concurrently designed the IEEE 754 spec and
the x87.
Actually cited this *because* of you mentioning Kahan several
times. And because you said "The people who design these things
are not fools, and there are good reasons for the way things are."
Obviously, the designer of x87 and IEEE 754 (which both
explicitly allow such "magic" behind the back of the programmer)
thinks this is a good thing.
But after reading the book, I tend to agree with Gustafson. In
the book this is elaborated more in detail, I just cited the
conclusion.
