Was talking about how you can't sum 2e63 with 2e-63 and have the answer in a single byte without losing precision, even when the system is capable of storing up to 2e63 and down to 2e-63.

RIP mantissa D:

Still, happy belated birthday.

There's nothing in particular preventing you from representing huge numbers on a computer. Such representations couldn't be used "natively" in the execution units, but it's not like the human brain has streamlined up-arrow registers and execution pipelines either.

That's what I meant.

Speed is a potential issue if you're going reeeaaaaallllyyyy big and need an exact answer, but with billions of 64-bit ops per second available, you can get a decent amount of work done in reasonable time.

And that is the long answer. :p

(and even before that point, there are big limitations in how large one operator is compared to the other).

I'm not quite sure what you're referring to here.

Was talking about how you can't sum 2e63 with 2e-63 and have the answer in a single byte without losing precision, even when the system is capable of storing up to 2e63 and down to 2e-63.

Wow, thanks to Nico, my 91 year old father got to say happy birthday too!

(For all you youngsters out there, he's the voice of the surly dwarf, and we just watched the Seahawks beat the 49's yesterday!)

Spectacular.

Computers can only handle mathematical operations up to a point

I mean, you can certainly visualize larger numbers at will, but the computer won't do anything with it.

There's nothing in particular preventing you from representing huge numbers on a computer. Such representations couldn't be used "natively" in the execution units, but it's not like the human brain has streamlined up-arrow registers and execution pipelines either.

Speed is a potential issue if you're going reeeaaaaallllyyyy big and need an exact answer, but with billions of 64-bit ops per second available, you can get a decent amount of work done in reasonable time.

(and even before that point, there are big limitations in how large one operator is compared to the other).

I'm not quite sure what you're referring to here.

(For all you youngsters out there, he's the voice of the surly dwarf, and we just watched the Seahawks beat the 49's yesterday!)

Can you do the rest of the song? :D

Great video.