Re: stopped BRK.A's data going out before it oveflowed
They knew the limits when they first wrote the code. They probably even had an alert in place to automatically email everyone from the CTO down when that limit was being approached.
Real code in the real world has limits. Real businesses have to make real business decisions about which limits are the appropriate ones for the job at hand.
As mentioned above, arbitrary precision is dirt slow, and error prone. Almost certainly the wrong solution for order processing.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
