math programming

math programming in sepples is rather complicated to the point that books are written on the subject. first there is the factor of limited precision of types, like how much a double or long double can hold. so is it preferable to use dynamic programming languages like Python and Perl that dont have any limit on length of floating point precision? and is it true that twos compliment creates gaps in the number line? do calculators use twos compliment? I noticed some high end calculators use the old Z80 or 6502 CPUs, but is there added arithmetic circuitry or can you rely on these standard CPUs to provide sufficient math processing?

>>10
In CL, rationals are just a pair of two integers (as in math), integers can be bignums as well as fixnums (for efficiency reasons). As for the precision, it depends on the type of floats used - some implementations even allow arbitrary precision or allow you to control the precision through some dynamic variables.