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>It's even worse for a builtin function... You'd need to test it, code review it, and so on

If you can't trust built-in functions to do what they say on the standard library documentation, you're either paranoid or made a wrong choice of language. (Or you have some very compelling reason to be working in a language that's still rough, like the early days of Swift, which is an entirely different game).

>If you're really suggesting that you can't be trusted to calculate an average correctly

It's not about what you can be trusted to do, but what's worth spending your time on.



Which languages do you trust to use Knuth's algorithm (or something similarly comprehensive and exhaustive) without checking?

Not going to check many, but a quick look, since I've got them handy: Python fails Spivak's criteria, as does .NET.


I don't care. I expect it to work for the simple case, and I expect not to spend time on it unless there is a good reason (like I have very large numbers and must be careful not to overflow).


You responded to a point I made in response to Spivak. If you don't care about his argument, then it might be worth responding elsewhere.




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