Eleanor McHugh wrote:
> On 15 Nov 2009, at 00:42, Marnen Laibow-Koser wrote:
>>
>> Well, error accumulates pretty quickly in IEEE 754 floats, and
>> trajectories require lots of calculation.  I wouldn't trust floats  
>> in a
>> situation like that -- would you?
> 
> In a hardcore physics simulation with many forces then no I wouldn't,
> but in a simple game then yes I'd probably go with floating-point :)

Why?  I can't see a single reason to use IEEE floats, unless you've done 
benchmarks and are absolutely certain that it's causing a performance 
problem. (Ward Cunningham did just that on a computationally intensive 
Smalltalk application that used fixed-point for all math -- and found 
that he couldn't even measure a difference in performance.)

IEEE floats have no advantages that I can see and huge disadvantages.  I 
just don't see them as being even slightly appropriate or useful for 
math.

> 
> 
> Ellie
> 
> Eleanor McHugh
> Games With Brains
> http://slides.games-with-brains.net
> ----
> raise ArgumentError unless @reality.responds_to? :reason

Best,
--
Marnen Laibow-Koser
http://www.marnen.org
marnen / marnen.org
-- 
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