Does python suck or I am just stupid?

[Alex Martelli]

Greg Ewing (using news.cis.dfn.de) wrote:

> Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:
>>         You can always ask them if their calculator is telling the
>>         "absolute"
>> truth when performing:
>> 
>>                 1 / 3 * 3
>> 
>> (if it comes up with 1, it must be using hidden guard digits and
>> rounding the display).
> 
> O ye of little faith. They might equally be using
> the One True Calculator, which doesn't need any
> poxy guard digits, but computes the Absolute Truth
> directly using its built-in omniscience function!

Or a GOOD calculator, such as the one found at:

http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Hans_Boehm/crcalc/

And why not, after all?  With today's prices for memory
and computation power, and the kind of use a calculator
is typically put to (computing just one number at a time,
even though perhaps by some complicated formula), why
_shouldn't_ calculators use Constructive Reals today...?


Alex