463
IEEE 754
(cdn.fosstodon.org)
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/24332731
~~Stolen~~ Cross-posted from here: https://fosstodon.org/@foo/113731569632505985
It’s useful to know that floats don’t have unlimited precision, and why adding a very large number with a very small number isn’t going to work well.
Yeah but you don't really have to think about how it works in the background ever time you deal with that. You just know.
You learn how once and then you just remember not to do that and that's it.
I agree we don’t generally need think about the technical details. It’s just good to be aware of the exponent and mantissa parts to better understand where the inaccuracies of floating point numbers come from.
And this is why f64 exists!