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by adolgert 2076 days ago
Dijkstra on the matter: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/E...
2 comments

Dijkstra has a certain tone. He can make his opinions sound almost like a mathematical proof. But when you dig into it, he just says 0-based is "nicer".
The points he makes are so extremely minor... You could just as easily say that natural language and mathematical convention are index-1.
I never understood the fascination with preferring "the element at zero offset from the start" to "the first element" - and I don't think djiskarta makes a compelling argument.