Comment by user3939382
4 years ago
There are libraries that offer more appropriate ways of dealing with it, but last time I ran into a FP-related bug (something to do with parsing xlsx into MySQL) I fixed it quickly by converting everything to strings and doing some unholy procedure on them. It worked but it wasn’t my proudest moment as a programmer.
I wish to learn a better way. FP is sure to byte again and again.
Well, manually floating the point in a string is sure to bite again and again too, but way more frequently than in binary.
There is actually no better way, if you try to calculate over the reals (with computers or whatever you want), you are prone to be bitten. Once in a while there's an article about intervalar algebra on HN, those are a great opportunity to just nod positively and remember all of the flaws of intervalar algebra I got to learn on my school's physics labs. (And yeah, those flaws do fit some problems better than FP, but not all.)
Pity the rational numbers (fractions) did not catch on. Of course it has flaws too but bit easier to grasp. And it handles important cases like 1/3 or 1/10 exactly.