I think it's wise for dbpro to incorporate as many math shortcuts as possible. There are two reasons for this -
Firstly, it makes our lives a lot easier, reduces our coding times, reduces the amount of bugs we're likely to have and for those that are bad at maths, it makes thing possible. More importantly though, even though dbpro compiles our source, we're still not dealing with a coding environment that is as efficient as the code dbpro was written in (I'm making assumptions here). By us rewriting the same function that the dbpro team created for us, ours will probably be much slower and less efficient.
I'm only guessing here, but I think the more maths shortcuts the dbpro team put in, there better it is for all of us, in many ways. And of course, if you dont want to use them, you dont have to.
Machine: P4 2200, 512MB, GeForce4 64MB, Audigy Platinum
There's a junglist inside every coder. http://www.kontact-kru.com for my own personal breakbeat terrorism.