Re: java.lang.Rational ...
Albretch Mueller wrote:
why not java.lang.Rational? It naturally fits within the Number class
hierarchy!
Lew wrote:
So it's Sun's job to write every class you'll ever need? If they did
that, how would you justify your high programmer's salary?
Arne Vajh??j wrote:
Basic mathematical entities is a rather small subset of all classes.
True but not highly relevant.
My point is that Sun cannot implement every useful class one can imagine.
That holds true even within an arbitrary "rather small subset of all classes."
I doubt there's a single package within Java's standard API that everyone
would agree is complete, whether it's java.util, java.math, java.io or even
java.lang. The best one can hope for, and what we actually have, is a robust
library that has most of what we need most of the time, and a thriving
third-party open-source marketplace that includes JScience and Apache Commons
to fill in some of the gaps, never mind the various for-pay libraries out there.
I would not agree that 'Rational' is so basic that it represents a serious
oversight on Sun's part to omit it. To quote one of our smartest and most
knowledgeable contributors:
Arne Vajh??j wrote:
"Rational is not a traditional basic type in programming like the above
[BigDecimal, BigInteger, Byte, Double, Float, Integer, Long, Short]. ... And
no matter how much they chose to include then there will always be some that
think some functionality is missing."
--
Lew