sqrt(2) must go

[Marco Leise]

Am 20.10.2011, 22:09 Uhr, schrieb Manu <turkeyman at gmail.com>:

> I think you just brushed over my entire concern with respect to  
> libraries,
> and very likely the standard library its self.
> I've also made what I consider to be reasonable counter arguments to  
> those
> points in earlier posts, so I won't repeat myself.
>
> I think it's fairly safe to say though, with respect to Don's question,
> using a tie-breaker is extremely controversial. I can't see any way that
> could be unanimously considered a good idea.
> I stand by the call to ban implicit conversion between float/int. Some
> might consider that a minor annoyance, but it also has so many potential
> advantages and time savers down the line too.

I start to understand the problems with implicit conversions and I think  
now that the size of the integer has no relation at all to size of the  
float in a conversion. For a large integer you may loose precision  
immediately when it is stored to a float instead of a double, but when you  
run sqrt() on it you introduce some more error anyway.
So I'd vote for no implicit conversion unless the situation is unambiguous  
and the precision is sufficient, like in an assignment or calling a method  
with no overload. At least code would not break silently if overloads for  
sqrt would be provided later.