More devs should learn to use Rational types. A pretty large majority of the numbers that people care about in real life can easily be represented by a ratio of integers, and they allow math with perfect precision.

eta: even monetary types are just a form of Rational, with the denominators clamped to powers of ten

[–] boonhet@lemm.ee 7 points 10 months ago

Or just BigDecimal or an equivalent if rational types aren't easy to use in your language (e.g if you'd have to literally enter the denominator and numerator).

[–] Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

Someone posted this article a while back that goes into more detail on some alternatives, as well as contains one of the best and most intuitive explanations of floating point that I've ever read.

[–] Metostopholes@midwest.social 5 points 10 months ago

Reject modernity, return to COBOL.

[–] zerofk@lemm.ee 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

There is a paper titled “What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic” by David Goldberg. It’s a bit theoretical, but IMO it’s a must-read for any programmer doing more than the occasional floating point calculation. It goes beyond just limited precision and rounding errors.

[–] Flipper@feddit.org 3 points 10 months ago

Here the link for everyone.

[–] jxk@sh.itjust.works 2 points 10 months ago

Javascript: The result is "0.10.2"

[–] rikudou@lemmings.world 2 points 10 months ago

PHP: 0.3*

* with default precision

[–] beejboytyson@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

Jemapelle