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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 107079,c7637cfdf68e766 X-Google-Attributes: gid107079,public X-Google-Thread: 109d8a,c7637cfdf68e766 X-Google-Attributes: gid109d8a,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,c7637cfdf68e766 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: f43e6,c7637cfdf68e766 X-Google-Attributes: gidf43e6,public X-Google-Thread: f8362,c7637cfdf68e766 X-Google-Attributes: gidf8362,public From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Subject: Re: floating point comparison Date: 1997/08/23 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 268185665 References: <33EA46CC.226@pseserv3.fw.hac.com> <871377938snz@nezumi.demon.co.uk> <33FE4D83.4DCD@pseserv3.fw.hac.com> Organization: New York University Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,sci.math.num-analysis,comp.software-eng,comp.theory,sci.math Date: 1997-08-23T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Wes says <> The general rule is: don't use features of a language that you do not fully understand. I don't really see such a guideline as useful in AQ&S. And actually I don't think there is much helpful that one can put in AQ&S. Remember that AQ&S assumes that you *know* Ada. In the case of floating-point, it should assume that you know the Ada features in this area, and fully understand the floating-point model and the associated attributes. AQ&S is NOT a tutorial in Ada! My own feeling is that everyone doing any programming should know enough about floating-point and numerical analysis to answer Wes' question for themselves. If they don't then they have a gap in their technical education -- that's not so terrible, we all have such gaps (I personally wish I had studied mathematical logic more deeply). But you need to be aware of the gaps you have, and either work to plug them, or steer clear of situations where they get you into trouble! I understand that people are still wanting some simple guidelines here, but isn't it interesting that many of those who might know enough to write such guidelines are exactly the people saying that they cannot be usefully written! Note that AQ&S is about improving quality through use of good style. What we are talking about here is substance, not style, and I as I said earlier, I don't think that AQ&S is successful when it crosses this line (which it does occasionally in various areas).