15:12 <evdubs> is there a way to tell if the error "http-client: Connection ended early" can be caught with a exn:fail:network handler?

15:20 <evdubs> or should i just not assume that it would be caught with exn:fail:network if the error is called like: (error 'http-client "Connection ended early")

16:25 <jcowan> Hi, all. Does anyone know why Racket decided to introduce support for single-precision floating point? Dr. Google is not being helpful today.

16:28 <evdubs> ? is it not a good thing that both single and double precision are supported?

16:29 <jcowan> perhaps. But someone went to a lot of trouble to make it so: they must have had a reason.

16:30 <evdubs> purely a guess, but maybe it's legacy?

16:45 <jcowan> No. The Racket blog documents that single-floats as generic numbers (as opposed to a separate type manageable only with a separate library) was introuced in Racket 5.1.1, so it was definitely not there from the beginning. In addition, Scheme standards talk only about the f-notation like 3.2f0, but do not require that this represent anything different from 3.2.

16:49 <evdubs> here's what i see in https://docs.racket-lang.org/release/HISTORY.txt - Version 51, March 25, 1998 - Added support for single-precision floating points (turned

16:49 <evdubs> off in default compilation)

16:50 <evdubs> then 5.1.1 (May 2011) enabled them by default

16:52 <jcowan> yes; what, not why

16:53 <jcowan> I am thinking about single-float support in R7RS-large, pros and cons, and as only Racket and Guile have it, I'd like to know why. (Guile has always had it, I think, because of its tight interoperation with C.) Shorter floats are becoming important again with the rise of GPUs (which don't do double-float) and machine learning generally.

16:54 <evdubs> i think you may get more useful responses from the mailing list

16:55 <jcowan> Fair, thanks.

19:54 <jcowan> In any case I note that single floats may disappear from Racket at least for a while (or retreat to the type-specific library), since Chez does not support them and they are not a priority for the Chez conversion.