alt Hacker NewsI implemented float-to-string for my compiler's printf back sometime before 1985. It's a medium difficult problem.
Once you understand engineering, transferring that skill to another engineering discipline is not that hard.
For example, the equations for Newtonian mechanics, electronics, beam design, rotating inertia, etc., are interchangeable.
> his competence to build orbital data centers
Since nobody has yet built an orbital data center, nobody is competent at it yet.
> I implemented float-to-string for my compiler's printf back sometime before 1985. It's a medium difficult problem.
It might have been medium difficult back in 1985, but the state of the art has progressed in the intervening 40 years. The constraint of correctness makes things trickier because it further imposes three requirements: completeness, uniqueness, and determinism.
Unless the implementer has the skill to prove these properties about the algorithm they've implemented, such an implementation is likely not to achieve those requirements.