1/0 = 0

My problem with "1/0 = 0" is that it's essentially masking what's almost always a bug in your program. If you have a program that's performing divide-by-zeroes, that's almost surely something you did not intend for. It's a corner case that you failed to anticipate and plan for. And because you didn't plan for it, whatever result you get for 1/0 is almost surely a result that you wouldn't want to have returned to the user. When encountering such unanticipated…

I debated this with my boss at my first programming job (this was 20+ years ago). He thought 1/0 should be 0 rather than an error because "that's what people expect". My argument was from mathematical definitions (the argument which this blog post picks apart). In retrospect, I see his point better - practical use trumps theory in most language design decisions. I haven't changed my mind but the reason has shifted more toward because "it's what a larger set…

In my language, division isn't closed. The type of x/y is maybe<double> because when you do shenanigans of defining division as a different operator than multiplying by the multiplicative inverse, your code sucks.

What is in your opinion the best way to return from a division by zero * Infinity * Throw Error * 0 * Something else I wanted to submit this as an ask hn, and share the url that suggest the 0 answer, but I sort of failed