The code that generated an exception was not useful by the time rocket left the launch pad. Yet because the designers, like you, incorrectly thought that division by zero must throw an exception, the flight controller crashed, and with it, the rocket.

No, you are wrong that the error was in the code handling flight trajectory computations. It was in the part of software that was needed before the launch, and not at all during the flight. The results of that computation were not needed for guidance, and yet unhandled exception caused the controller to crash.

Secondly, you are wrong when you assume that the division by zero is necessarily an error. There are valid and useful numerical algorithms that rely on division by zero being well-defined operation.

Nope. Division by zero is NaN if and only if the numerator is zero as well.

Wrong wrong wrong misguided and wrong again. division of non-zero by zero is quite meaningful and is defined by IEEE standard for floating point arithmetic to return infinity (wtih appropriate sign depending on the signs of the zero and numerator).

In the rare cases when exception is needed IEEE compliant fp math implementation provides mechanism for it

No he isn't. He is right, too.

We need a special big stick to slap morons like RackinFrackin for ignorant comments like the one above . What's worse, he is "correcting" someone who knows better than him.

Yes, you (almost always) do NOT want to throw exceptions on division by zero. Doing otherwise resulted in billion-dollar explosion of Arian 5 rocket.

Yep, well, it simiply does not mean that your code is wrong. There are valid reasons to divide by zero.

Oh my god, this whole discussion is so misguided it hurts my eyes to look at. Why don't you people go educate yourself about floating-point arithmetics? IEEE754 standard was designed by top-notch numerical expert and YOU IGNORE IT AT YOUR AND YOUR USERS' PERIL.

And yeah, division of nonzero by +zero must give Inf, and there are actual useful numerical algorithms that make use of that.

More to the point, it's unfair to Microsoft's sales

Systemd crowd is working hard to take away the option of using non-sytemd tools. And by the way, "write your own" is not an acceptable answer. No one can write every tool he needs to use the system.

So, you can not read, too. Why I am not surprised?

If the "community" is worse off because of more freedom, then may be that community isn't so great and I for one don't care about such community at all.

You are changing the subject. "The whole initscripts mess" may or may not work outside the init infrastructure. But each individual script will, which is precisely the point. On the other hand, none of systemd components will work outside systemd. So please stop your shilling.

Aaand that is simply false. Why systemd shills won't just stop lying, I wonder?