DEC64: Decimal Floating Point

> DEC64 is intended to be the only number type in the next generation of application programming languages. Please no. There's a very solid case for integers in programming languages: many places in code call for a number which must be an integer: having the type enforce this is nice: you don't need to check and abort (or floor, or whatever) if someone passes you a non-integer. Basically, anything that does an array index, which is any for loop walking…

If you want a default decimal floating-point type, the only defensible choice is the decimal128 type standardized by IEEE 754. It has a fully-defined arithmetic, specified by experts who have spent their careers thinking about the issues involved, and is wide enough to exactly represent the US national debt in every currency used on earth. There are situations where other decimal floating-point types are appropriate, but if you do not understand the tradeoffs you are making, you should be using…

Am I the only one who saw DEC in the title and got excited (perhaps a revival of the DEC Alpha 64 platform)?!?

Why would you ever use floating point for money? You're just asking for rounding errors if you actually use the range, aren't you?