[Python-ideas] Settable defaulting to decimal instead of float

[Chris Angelico]

On Thu, Jan 12, 2017 at 11:07 PM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
> As far as I know the main barrier to that approach is simply the lack
> of folks with the time, interest, and expertise needed to implement,
> review, and document it, rather than it being an objectionable
> proposal at the language design level. (There would be some concerns
> around potential confusion between when to use the default binary
> literals and when to use the decimal literals, but those concerns
> arise anyway - the discrepancies between binary and decimal arithmetic
> are just one of those unfortunate facts of computing at this point)

Most of the time one of my students talks to me about decimal vs
binary, they're thinking that a decimal literal (or converting the
default non-integer literal to be decimal) is a panacea to the "0.1 +
0.2 != 0.3" problem. Perhaps the real solution is a written-up
explanation of why binary floating point is actually a good thing, and
not just a backward-compatibility requirement?

ChrisA