Trailing zeros of 100!

[Ben Finney]

Robin Koch <robin.koch at t-online.de> writes:

> Am 02.01.2016 um 22:57 schrieb Chris Angelico:
> >>> But did you actually test it?
> >>
> >> Yes, should work for n >= 1.

By “test it”, Chris of course means test it *by implementing it in a
program and running that program in Python*.

> >> Why do you ask?
> >
> > Your "should work" does not sound good as a response to "actually
> > test". Normally I would expect the response to be "Yes, and it
> > worked for me" (maybe with a log of an interactive session).
>
> Well, honestly, I trusted my math and didn't thought much about the
> technical limitations.

That's why it's good to actually test the hypothesis in a real computer
program, run on the actual computer system you're going to use.

Computers are physical systems, with technical compromises to the
physical constraints under which they were built.

They are not perfect implementations of our ideal mathematics, and
testing the mathematics is no guarantee the mathematical assumptions
will survive your program unscathed.

So, a request “Did you actually test it?” is both a polite reminder to
do that, and an attempt to get you to do so if you didn't.

If you didn't, then answering “yes” is wasting everyone's time.

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Ben Finney