[maxdamantus]

The issue is whether you want to cater to established conventions (both in mathematics where 1-based indexing is typical, but non-mathematicians will also similarly use 1-based counting), or you want to cater to what is most logical.

I suspect the main reason 1-based seems convenient for some things is because of convention. Note that 0 wasn't even really used in mathematics until hundreds of years after our system of counting years was created.

Since our year counting is 1-based, we end up with odd things like "2019" being the "19th year" of the "21st century" as opposed to "2018" being "year 18" of "century 20". I suspect it's also fairly unintuitive that the current century began in the year "2001" rather than "2000".

[pjmlp]

Had Pascal/Modula-2/Ada won over C and we wouldn't be even discussing this.

[oconnor663]

> as opposed to "2018" being "year 18" of "century 20"

Wow that's the best argument in favor of 0-based counting I've ever heard :)