Hacker News Reader

> In Java, the java.math.BigDecimal is not a primitive data type. It also has an awkward api due to lack of operator overloading (thanks to BigDecimal not being a primitive data type it seems).

If you're on the JVM, Groovy is nicer in that regard. It uses by default BigDecimal and BigInteger for literal numeric types, and has operator overloading: http://groovy-lang.org/syntax.html

View on HN

> It uses by default BigDecimal and BigInteger for literal numeric types

Apache Groovy uses by default BigDecimal for literal decimal types, but only uses BigInteger for literal integral types when it would overflow the largest available primitive type for that literal. You can force a BigInteger by using the suffix `g` on the integral literal. Perhaps misunderstanding this is the source of some hard-to-find bugs in some of your Groovy code.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com