Why don't we switch to C like floating pointed arithmetic instead of automatic expansion to reals?

[Ilya Yaroshenko via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 5 August 2016 at 06:59:21 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 8/4/2016 11:05 PM, Fool wrote:
>> I understand your point of view. However, there are (probably 
>> rare) situations
>> where one requires more control. I think that simulating 
>> double-double precision
>> arithmetic using Veltkamp split was mentioned as a resonable 
>> example, earlier.
>
> There are cases where doing things at higher precision results 
> in double rounding and a less accurate result. But I am pretty 
> sure there are far fewer of those cases compared to routine 
> computations that get a more accurate result with more 
> precision.
>
> If that wasn't true, we wouldn't ever need double precision.

You are wrong that there are far fewer of those cases. This is 
naive point of view. A lot of netlib math functions require exact 
IEEE arithmetic. Tinflex requires it. Python C backend and Mir 
library require exact IEEE arithmetic. Atmosphere package 
requires it, Atmosphere is used as reference code for my 
publication in JMS, Springer. And the most important case: no one 
top scientific laboratory will use a language without exact IEEE 
arithmetic by default.