[zimablue]

I guess, because often you're not arguing in order to convince your opponent, you're arguing to sway the crowd (and sometimes, decide yourself).

And I don't think they're idiots, I just think that they're wrong. Not many people have read Djikstra and (?) and have deep faith in mathematical beauty, or have even thought about this much, doesn't make them idiots.

[saosebastiao]

The most prominent programming languages designed specifically for mathematical purposes (Mathematica, MatLab, Julia, R, Fortran), all have 1-based indexing. That should be a sign to you that 1-based indexing has a legitimate mathematical rationale. Djikstra wasn't speaking on behalf of the mathematics community. The idea that if you have deep faith in mathematical beauty that you'll come to the same conclusion is absurd.

[zimablue]

I'm pretty sure that they just copied Fortan, which was written most of a century ago.

That's the second time you've ridiculously misrepresented my statements: "anyone disagreeing with you is an idiot" "deep faith will lead you to the conclusion" (and not deep faith + thinking about the actual problem, several convincing arguments and some ability)

[darksaints]

One based indexing is used in tons of domains within mathematics.

Fortran chose 1-based indexing for a very obvious reason...it was the best translation from the mathematics literature that they were trying to implement. Because matrix notation uses 1-based indexing! MatLab, a language designed specifically as a high level language for matrix mathematics, chose it for the same reason. R, a language for statistics, chose 1-based indexing because it is a statistical language, and counting is one of the most fundamental operations in statistics, and 1-based indexing is the form used for counting.

Mathematicians obviously have no problem switching back and forth between 0-based and 1-based indexing for different domains, so it boggles my mind that computer scientists have turned it into such a huge holy war, and even more mind-boggling that 0-based zealots claim to have mathematics on their side.

[zimablue]

Maths on your side != mathematical convention on your side.