floating point in 2.0

[Eugene.Leitl at lrz.uni-muenchen.de]

Nick Perkins wrote:
 
> That is why decimal numbers are more powerful than binary, because for any
> given length, the set of numbers representable in decimal is a superset of
> those representable in binay.

Binary representation is most natural in digital systems. Binary
ALUs are faster and use less transistor resources than e.g. BCD.
The Zuse, one of the first computers, was binary already.
 
As to Python, it is an interpreted language. Talking about numerics
hardware efficiency aspects in absence of a compiler is ridiculous.
I think the difference between 2/3 and 2.0/3.0 should be easy
enough to grasp, and the standard behaviour should not be changed,
for no good reason at all.

The L numbers are nice, and if we'll get rationals, that would
be very nice, too.

______________________________________________________________
ICBMTO  : N48 10'07'' E011 33'53'' http://www.lrz.de/~ui22204
57F9CFD3: ED90 0433 EB74 E4A9 537F CFF5 86E7 629B 57F9 CFD3