I think the thing that truly scares me about floating point is not IEEE-754 or even the weird custom floating points that people come up with but the horrible, horrible things that some people think passes for a floating point implementation in hardware, who think that things like infinities or precision in the last place are kind of overrated.
And anyone implementing numerical algorithms is thankful for the tremendous amount of thought put into the fp spec. The complexity is worth it and makes the code much safer.
I think the thing that truly scares me about floating point is not IEEE-754 or even the weird custom floating points that people come up with but the horrible, horrible things that some people think passes for a floating point implementation in hardware, who think that things like infinities or precision in the last place are kind of overrated.
Everyone who has ever had to build a floating point unit has hated it with a passion, I've watched in done from afar, and done it myself
And anyone implementing numerical algorithms is thankful for the tremendous amount of thought put into the fp spec. The complexity is worth it and makes the code much safer.