Remove real type

[Bill Baxter]

On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 11:27 AM, BCS <none at anon.com> wrote:
> Hello Bill,
>
>> Seems to me the only use is to
>> preserve a few more bits in intermediate computations.
>
> There are some cases where you simply want to keep as much precision as you
> can. In those cases variable precision floats aren't any better of a
> solution as you would just turn them up as far as you can without
> unacceptable cost elsewhere.

So what's the advice you would you give to Joe coder about when to use 'real'?
My argument is that it is probably something like "if you don't know
why you need it then you probably don't need it".  And I suspect very
few people actually need it.  But as is, it looks like something that
one ought to use.  It has the shortest name of all the floating point
types.  And the description sounds pretty good -- more precision,
hardware supported.  Wow!  Why wouldn't I want that?  But the fact is
that most people will never need it.  And Bearophile listed some good
reasons why not to use it in general circumstances.  I think it is
nice to have available, but I don't think it needs to occupy such a
plumb spot in the language namespace.  It's kind of like a siren
luring unwary coders to use it, when they would be better off staying
away.

--bb