There are several places in our codebase where we are relying on C-style casts instead of using C++ casts. While it's true that writing something like float(value) is shorter and arguably more readable than something like static_cast<float>(value), C-style casts are inherently a worse choice. In particular, there are three benefits of using C++ style casts:

• they're checked at compile time by the compiler (when it's possible to do so).
• they express intent much better than C-style casts.
• they're greppable (very useful when refactoring something).