for / while else doesn't make sense

Jon Ribbens jon+usenet at unequivocal.co.uk
Sun May 22 11:09:30 EDT 2016


On 2016-05-22, Marko Rauhamaa <marko at pacujo.net> wrote:
> Jon Ribbens <jon+usenet at unequivocal.co.uk>:
>> That's a trap for those people though - it lulls them into thinking
>> that they understand what's going on, when in fact they don't, because
>> they don't understand floats, because almost nobody understands
>> floats. So they don't understand their program, and - even worse -
>> they don't know that they don't understand it.
>
> I don't understand this rant.

And I don't understand your use of the word "rant".

> Numeric programming is one of the oldest uses for computers.
> Rounding errors have been there since the beginning. If you think
> people have a hard time getting floats, integers are at least as
> hard to get.

That is clearly nonsense.

> How about classes, closures, threads, asyncio...?

People don't tend to think of those as simple things that they already
understand when they don't. Also, those things don't tend to turn up
to the party uninvited.



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