Text is text. It's stored as bits, typically 8 bits per character. It allows arbitrary precision but is very space (and memory throughput) inefficient. Fine, compression works but there are many more bits flying around and you're spending CPU cycles on decompression.
What could you do instead? Use appropriate integers, fixed point, or floating point representations. Everybody here knows these things. Nobody is pretending anything.
To the point of portability: IEEE-754 is the same everywhere.
What could you do instead? Use appropriate integers, fixed point, or floating point representations. Everybody here knows these things. Nobody is pretending anything.
To the point of portability: IEEE-754 is the same everywhere.