> Maintaining symbolic values could quickly blow up.
It could, in certain circumstances.
> I don't see how irrationals as floats is premature optimization.
It is, when it is because “could” and not because “does”.
> If you already know symbolic representation is going to blow up quickly and cause downstream headaches the measures you take are not premature
Sure, if you know that's going to happen. When you do it because it might happen, or because it happens to be the language’s default representation of irrational (or even exact decimal, or in JS’s case exact integer) numbers, that's a different story.
So can you name a language that does symbolic representation? It sounds like one of those things which are great in theory but hellish in implementation.
It could, in certain circumstances.
> I don't see how irrationals as floats is premature optimization.
It is, when it is because “could” and not because “does”.
> If you already know symbolic representation is going to blow up quickly and cause downstream headaches the measures you take are not premature
Sure, if you know that's going to happen. When you do it because it might happen, or because it happens to be the language’s default representation of irrational (or even exact decimal, or in JS’s case exact integer) numbers, that's a different story.