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Uncertain<T>

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444 points samtheprogram | 2 comments | 28 Aug 25 17:22 UTC | HN request time: 0.462s | source
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j2kun ◴[28 Aug 25 20:44 UTC] No.45056827[source]▶
This concept has been done many times in the past, under the name "interval arithmetic." Boost has it [1] as does flint [2]

What is really curious is why, after being reinvented so many times, it is not more mainstream. I would love to talk to people who have tried using it in production and then decided it was a bad idea (if they exist).

[1]: https://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_89_0/libs/numeric/interval/... [2]: https://arblib.org/

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1. woah ◴[28 Aug 25 23:57 UTC] No.45058375[source]▶
Using simple types (booleans etc) is very simple and easy to reason about, and any shortcomings are obvious. Trying to model physical uncertainty is difficult and requires different models for different domains. Once you have committed to needing to do that, it would be much better to use a purpose built model instead of a library which put some bell curves behind a pretty API.
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2. eru ◴[29 Aug 25 01:46 UTC] No.45059106[source]▶
I agree that different application strictly speaking need different models of uncertainty.

But I'm not so sure in your conclusion: a good enough model could be universally useful. See how everyone uses IEEE 754 floats, despite them giving effectively one very specific model of uncertainty. Most of the time this just works, and sometimes people have to explicitly work around floats' weirdnesses (whether that's because they carefully planned ahead because they know what they are doing, or whether they got a nasty surprise first). But overall they are still useful enough to be used almost universally.