In the olden days, the use of floating point numbers imposed a significant computation and speed overhead compared to integer arithmetic. For this reason, many optimization guidebooks and IT veterans still recommend that you use integers instead of floating point data. However, this adage isn’t true anymore. On modern processors, (e.g., the Pentium family) floating type arithmetic is faster than integer arithmetic. Therefore, if you wish to accelerate a computation-intensive application, you should actually reverse this rule: use floating point data instead of integers. Don’t get me wrong here: I don’t recommend using floating point instead of integers as loop counters, for example. The lesson here is that programmers shouldn’t heed obsolescent adages and myths about optimization that are no longer true.


What We Should Expect from Cell Phone Tech in the Near Future
The earliest cell phones included boxy designs full of buttons and antennas, and they only made calls. Needless to say, we’ve come a long way from those classic brick phones