# Herbie

Hacker Approved page: https://hackerapproved.com/p/herbie/

9 people recommended Herbie in Hacker News comments, 1 had mixed feelings and 3 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 12 months, in 5 threads. It does not meet the Hacker Approved badge rule.

5 of the 9 people who recommend it commented in one thread, “Herbie: Automatically improve imprecise floating point formulas”.

**Verdict:** Free tool that analyzes math expressions for floating point error and automatically finds more accurate formulas; critics say it does not replace understanding floating point issues.

Summary written by Claude from 16 comments. It was written before the November 2026 recount, and 15 of those comments still count.

## Why people recommend it

- Neat, interesting tool people hadn't heard of (3 comments in the sample): "What a neat tool, I had no idea such a thing existed!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49308864)) "The tool already seems quite nice" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47635068)) "This is very interesting!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47641611))
- Automatically finds more accurate formulas (2 comments in the sample): "This finds good formulas completely automatically." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47635641)) "this is Herbie's core strength" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47637932))
- Spares programmers manual floating point work (2 comments in the sample): "Herbie's approach can evolve to a point where the person writing the software doesn't directly write FPU operations" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48749290)) "You can use software like "Herbie" to help you a bit, but today's languages just leave you with it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49263074))

## The badge

A product earns the Hacker Approved badge when at least 10 people recommend it, recommenders outnumber critics at least 2 to 1 (mixed feelings count toward neither side), it was recommended in at least 4 of the 12 months and in at least 5 different threads, and no single thread supplies more than half of the people who recommend it. Health and money products are never badged.

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Herbie", https://hackerapproved.com/p/herbie/ (9 recommend, 1 mixed, 3 criticize; Hacker News comments, November 2025 to October 2026).

Counts updated 2 Nov 2026, with data through October 31, 2026.