From: Mike '/m' 


Did you build a telephone when you wanted to use one?

Did you build a car when you wanted to use one?

How about a refridgerator?  Or a washing machine?

(aside: I've actually assembled one of the latter...)

I said nothing about not wanted to know how things work (as an Engineer, I
have an instinctual curiosity about this world around us).

However, in the world of business, make vs buy decisions are made all the
time.  When it is appropriate to make instead of buy, there are very
definite reasons to do so.  In most instances, the satisfaction of one's
curiosity of how something works is not a reason to make instead of buy.

 /m

On Sun, 05 Feb 2006 12:06:10 +1200, black.hole.4.spam{at}gmail.com (Don Hills) wrote:

>In article ,
>Mike '/m'  wrote:
>>
>>Good grief, there are 3rd-party math libraries for that stuff.  Why
>>re-invent the world?
>
>Knowing "how stuff works", even if you then use a ready-made solution
>instead of doing it yourself, gives you an advantage over people who don't
>know. It gives you the knowledge needed to select the most efficient method
>for your particular implementation and sanity check it for accuracy.
>So, all credit to Geo for wanting to know.
>
>
>Somewhere I have an explanation of how the REXX language does its arithmetic
>(decimal based on strings). But if I want to code the division example given
>earlier, I just write:
>
>/**/
>numeric digits 80
>say 44857574839343585765769594030039384858786868694948437837376485 / 3

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