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Comment by Avshalom | Hacker News Reader

I mean I get the idea but

  No floating point datatypes
  No ... switch statements or do...while loops

seem like terrible things to leave out, occasional gotchas of floating point not with standing being only integers means no division

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No floating point types is a little harsh, but IMHO one should only use them when they really understand their implications. Otherwise they might be tempted to do Bad Stuff like using float for currencies, etc.

“No division”? How do you reason this? Integer division is a thing

division is not defined on the set of integers, you only have modular arithmetic.

See section 7 of http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~15122/handouts/02-ints.pdf

(As an aside nearly every language defines division on the set of integers this way so it’s not even like we’re making this up)

division is also not defined on the set of IEEE binary floating point numbers, you only have (well-defined) rounding.

For that matter, addition and subtraction aren't defined on the range of fixed-bit-width integers.

It is defined and you can do it in C without using floats. On the other hand, even if you do use floats, arbitrary arithmetic is not invertible. In other words a / b * b isn't necessarily a, regardless of what types they are.

What do you mean division is not defined on the set of integers? Mathematically or programmatically? Because yes you have euclidean divisions which are divisions for the integers.

The first structured programming language I learned was a home grown language called Simpl-T, at the University of Maryland. It did not have floating point, but one could still do an awful lot with it. Other members of the Simpl-X family did have floating point, as I recall.

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