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amelius • yesterday at 12:39 PM • 2 replies • view on HN

But the rounding errors are way down in the nano-cents. Not worrying about them is cheaper!


Replies

andreareina • yesterday at 12:56 PM

The decimal library worries about rounding, that's basically free. With floats you need to decide when to use rounding (because you don't want to show a balance of -0.000000086) and it's more difficult to use automatic checks for the same reason.

glimshe • yesterday at 12:44 PM

If you're calculating your monthly expenses that's okay, but across millions of transactions of arbitrary amounts, something financial systems do regularly, aggregates start not adding up and you don't know where the money went.