Thou shalt have no other gods before the ANSI C standard 1655

Morten Reistad

Ok, but Avogadro's number is clearly a floating point.

Yeah, of course I agree. Even with Paul Rubin's correction to my table (though I disagree that 32 bits became obsolete in 2000 -- it actually hasn't gone obsolete yet, AMD just took a bold step by creating a smooth and early transition) we're talking about 30-40 years of life left or so. I think it would be impossible for someone 30 years ago to predict what the computer landscape looks like today (What? Computers on everyone's desktop?!?! Impossible! And why would people spend so much time on them communicating? Isn't that what telephones are for?).

And similarly, I don't think I am going to hazard a guess as to what we're going to do with computers in 30-40 years from now. A transition to 128 bits? Why not? The way software is written and what is really being used for is likely to change pretty significantly, and the concerns we have today are likely to change pretty drammatically. 30-40 years is a long time, and I don't think its wise to over-project what we see about our limitations today.

Oh well, I will make one guess -- there *STILL* will be no mainstream C99 compliant C compilers in that time. --- Paul Hsieh