fixed point was a mistake

[giuseppebilotta@fediscience.org]

@eniko (unless of course it's 40 years ago and you want good performance without hardware support for floating point)

[zrb@social.hildebrind.space]

@eniko so was floating point tbh, it makes my head hurt

return to int

[dacmot@sunny.garden]

How so @eniko?

Overly complicated? No performance gains? Odd graphical quirks /results?

[midnaw@idtech.space]

@eniko is it weird that i've literally never seen fixed point numbers in code

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@midnaw not really no, they're rarely used nowadays

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@dacmot head hurt

[dacmot@sunny.garden]

Ah. Fair.

Are you sure it's the fixed point and not the barometric pressure? 😅

@eniko

[disorderlyf@todon.eu]

@eniko oops, all ints

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

fixed point was in fact *not* a mistake

[at1st@mstdn.ca]

@eniko @midnaw As I understand, it's an iconic difference between COBOL and other languages that Fixed Point is native to COBOL, and every other language said "Floating point is good enough for everyone."?

[ratsnakegames@mastodon.social]

@eniko pretty important for, like, finance and shit

[muri@troet.cafe]

@eniko what a rollercoaster of emotions!

[gabrielesvelto@mas.to]

@ratsnakegames @eniko

[gabrielesvelto@mas.to]

@ratsnakegames @eniko I wanted to write COBOL not FORTRAN but my brain missed a beat

[ratsnakegames@mastodon.social]

@gabrielesvelto @eniko we still do that sh*t in Java or .NET these days because financial regulators really frown upon money vanishing because of floating point errors

[gabrielesvelto@mas.to]

@ratsnakegames and I commend you for that! In a past life I worked for a high-frquency trading firm and their software did financial calculations using floating point numbers 🤷

[gabrielesvelto@mas.to]

@eniko jumpscare

[m3t00@app.wafrn.net]

when 64kb ram was all anyone would ever need

[sabik@rants.au]

@gabrielesvelto @ratsnakegames
Eh, as long as there's enough bits in the mantissa...

[kevingranade@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@eniko following with interest.