[Fomite]

This, pretty much. Not to mention that, beyond languages, data is often 1-based indexed. I have never gotten a patient data set with ID=0 as the first entry. In my mind, compatibility with what users are expecting, and trying not to induce indexing errors, trumps most other concerns.

[jasode]

>, beyond languages, data is often 1-based indexed.

That's a good point. Probably the most widespread data example for non-programmers is spreadsheets (MS Excel, Google Sheets). The first row[1] in the spreadsheet is labeled as "1" instead of "0". The idiomatic Visual Basic programming code to loop through the rows would look something like:

  For Each cell In Range("a1:a25")  ' not "a0:a24"
      ' do work
  Next cell

[1]https://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+excel+spreadsheet+...