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from the COBOL-is-often-fractionally-better dept.
https://medium.com/@bellmar/is-cobol-holding-you-hostage-with-math-5498c0eb428b
Face it: nobody likes fractions, not even computers.
When we talk about COBOL the first question on everyone's mind is always Why are we still using it in so many critical places? Banks are still running COBOL, close to 7% of the GDP is dependent on COBOL in the form of payments from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, The IRS famously still uses COBOL, airlines still use COBOL (Adam Fletcher dropped my favorite fun fact on this topic in his Systems We Love talk: the reservation number on your ticket used to be just a pointer), lots of critical infrastructure both in the private and public sector still runs on COBOL.
Why?
The traditional answer is deeply cynical. Organizations are lazy, incompetent, stupid. They are cheap: unwilling to invest the money needed upfront to rewrite the whole system in something modern. Overall we assume that the reason so much of civil society runs on COBOL is a combination of inertia and shortsightedness. And certainly there is a little truth there. Rewriting a mass of spaghetti code is no small task. It is expensive. It is difficult. And if the existing software seems to be working fine there might be little incentive to invest in the project.
But back when I was working with the IRS the old COBOL developers used to tell me: "We tried to rewrite the code in Java and Java couldn't do the calculations right."
[Ed note: The referenced article is extremely readable and clearly explains the differences between floating-point and fixed-point math, as well as providing an example and explanation that clearly shows the tradeoffs.]
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Monday September 16 2019, @04:13PM (1 child)
I think 64 bit integers are still large enough to handle the current US debt as cents.
However, if Trump remains in power, this may not be so for much longer. In which case, you could always use double precision.
OTOH, if you are using floats for money, you should probably get a head transplant.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday September 16 2019, @04:59PM
64 bit integers can hand the US National Debt as expressed in Argentine Pesos, which is a larger magnitude number.
As you say, NEVER use floats for money. I thought everyone figured that out in the 1970's. Why in the 21st century does nobody seem to know that.
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