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Re:The Myth of Developer Obsolescence by whstl on Tuesday May 27, 2025 @09:05AM (#44106588)
Argh.

I had to explain recently that `a * x !== b * x when a !== b`*... it is infuriating hearing "but the result is the same in this other competitor" coupled with the "maybe the problem here is you're not knowledgeable enough to understand".

Re:The Myth of Developer Obsolescence by cogman10 on Tuesday May 27, 2025 @09:18AM (#44106697)
Ah, I see you've worked on financial software as well ;)

We've definitely had our fair share of "IDK what to tell you, those guys are mathing wrong".

TBF, though, most customers are pretty tolerant of explainable differences in computed values. There's a bunch of "meh, close enough" in finance. We usually only run into the problem when someone (IMO) is looking for a reason not to buy our software. "It's not a perfect match, no way we can use this" sort of thing.

Re:The Myth of Developer Obsolescence by whstl on Tuesday May 27, 2025 @09:59AM (#44107111)
The super-advanced math that finance folks would throw at us was daunting.

At this particular job I used the plus, the star (multiplication) and once I even got to use the minus.

There's a legend going around that a friend of mine has used division, but he has a PhD.