float init 0 request

[Walter Bright]

On 8/17/2026 5:59 AM, Indraj Gandham wrote:
> it's more likely you wanted 0.0 than NaN. In fact, NaN 
> is almost guaranteed to be incorrect

And that is exactly the point of NaN - to be incorrect, and to stand out like a 
rock in your shoe.


> D has many facets which make it the best programming language in the world. This 
> is not one of them.

Consider the two options:

1. default initialize to 0, because that will be correct most of the time. Never 
mind if the flight computer says 18,000 gallons of gas is needed to cross the 
Atlantic, when 20,000 is actually needed. But 18,000 looks good, and you take 
off, get past the halfway point, and fall out of the sky.

2. default initialize to NaN, and your flight computer says you need NaN gallons 
of gas, and you turn around and go immediately back to the gate.

Option 2 is better when writing professional quality software.

---

I googled "software catastrophe caused by incorrect zero initialization" and got:

"A software catastrophe caused by incorrect zero initialization often relates to 
uninitialized memory defaulting to zero unexpectedly, or conversely, a critical 
variable failing to be zeroed out or handling a zero value improperly (such as a 
division-by-zero or arithmetic counter rollover). A famous analogue is the 
September 1997 incident on the guided-missile cruiser USS Yorktown, where a crew 
member entered a 0 into a database field, causing a division-by-zero collapse 
across the ship's propulsion network."