As to the response about needing "a correct result instead of a rough approximation" when using integers, from a purely theoretical point of view I might agree totally, but from a practical point of view, how in the world can a zero answer be considered more accurate than even a rough approximation that's a lot-lot-lot-lot closer to the real answer, is beyond me.
But is it really so bad? I agree with your point about a less sophisticated user being puzzled when a 64-bit integer wraps, but is it better to silently coerce to a float? A silent coercion also causes nasty things to happen; that nice factorial algorithm still generates incorrect results (as a result of FP precision), but now instead of the results being wildly wrong they are slightly wrong. Both are wrong, but which is more likely to go unnoticed?
—Tim
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