Which D features to emphasize for academic review article

[Walter Bright]

On 8/10/2012 8:31 AM, TJB wrote:
> On Thursday, 9 August 2012 at 18:35:22 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>> On 8/9/2012 10:40 AM, dsimcha wrote:
>>> I'd emphasize the following:
>>
>> I'd like to add to that:
>>
>> 1. Proper support for 80 bit floating point types. Many compilers' libraries
>> have inaccurate 80 bit math functions, or don't implement 80 bit floats at
>> all. 80 bit floats reduce the incidence of creeping roundoff error.
>
> How unique to D is this feature?  Does this imply that things like BLAS and
> LAPACK, random number generators, statistical distribution functions, and other
> numerical software should be rewritten in pure D rather than calling out to
> external C or Fortran codes?

I attended a talk given by a physicist a few months ago where he was using C 
transcendental functions. I pointed out to him that those functions were 
unreliable, producing wrong bits in a manner that suggested to me that they were 
internally truncating to double precision.

He expressed astonishment and told me I must be mistaken.

What can I say? I run across this repeatedly, and that's exactly why Phobos 
(with Don's help) has its own implementations, rather than simply calling the 
corresponding C ones.

I encourage you to run your own tests, and draw your own conclusions.