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> I think float will be around for a while, what with the blinding speed in today's processors, and the availability of 80 bit intermediate precision.

...and well-understood numerical behavior...

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In my experience float is well understood by very few of those who use it. I have had to explain multiple times to people who have been using floats for years that just because floats have guaranteed minimum 6 significant digits doesn't mean that the result of your calculations will be correct to 6 significant digits.

Yes.

I have been thinking of running a floating-point school just for this reason. Lots of gotchas.

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