This is usually done by PL's that want to avoid crashes at all costs, but "turning crashes into subtle logic errors" seems like a really bad idea.
"As a programmer, I don’t like it."
"As mentioned before, this is not a post about what’s practically a good idea. All I’m arguing is that mathematically, we can extend division in this way without leading to a contradiction. Programming languages are different from mathematical formalisms, and should be different. I prefer that 1/0 is an error, because I’m not using my program to prove theories."
Please do yourself a favor and actually read it.
Besides, 0 as a sentinental value on disk or on the wire is fine, but once you have values in a programming language, use option types. This is not 1980s anymore, you don't need to use 0 or -1 or 0xffff to express something special which sooner or later just falls on your feet.
> This is not 1980s anymore, you don't need to use 0 or -1 or 0xffff to express something special which sooner or later just falls on your feet.
No. You missed the whole "real world systems". E.g. like stock trading, where zero stock trades are tombstones.
