From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.2 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: fac41,b87849933931bc93 X-Google-Attributes: gidfac41,public X-Google-Thread: 109fba,b87849933931bc93 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 114809,b87849933931bc93 X-Google-Attributes: gid114809,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,b87849933931bc93 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,b87849933931bc93 X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public From: Eric Clayberg Subject: Re: OO, C++, and something much better! Date: 1997/01/22 Message-ID: <32E6797A.6E21@parcplace.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 211550145 references: <5bphq4$5js@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU> <32E05FAF.47BA@concentric.net> <5buodl$bci@boursy.news.erols.com> <32E2FEC7.2F7B@concentric.net> <6PE5zLpF3RB@herold.franken.de> <32E57E2B.6CB7@epix.net> <32E57FBC.2325@epix.net> <5c4ita$3qs@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU> content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii organization: ParcPlace-Digitalk, Inc. mime-version: 1.0 reply-to: clayberg@parcplace.com newsgroups: comp.lang.eiffel,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.smalltalk,comp.object x-mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Win95; U) Date: 1997-01-22T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Fergus Henderson wrote: > I don't know how it got its start there, but I have heard that it got a > bit of a boost after the stockmarket crash in '87. Apparently the > volume of shares traded was very high, and many financial programs > failed, because the numbers involved were so large that they overflowed > various limits, but the Smalltalk programs kept running, because > Smalltalk quietly switches to using floating point arithmetic when > integer arithmetic overflows. (Well, that's the rumour anyway. I > don't know how much truth there is to it.) Actually, Smalltalk transparently switches to using "large" integers that have no limits on size. In fact, it's actually fun to run large factorials in Smalltalk to see how large an integer it will generate. VisualSmalltalk will calculate the result of "1000 factorial" in a second or two and display the results. BTW, the result of that expression is: :-) -Eric