[maxerickson]

We can include a year called 0 in the first century, no problem.

All we have to do to get a year 0 is decide that there was one.

[zarzavat]

For that matter let’s get rid of the asinine BC system and just use negative years AD.

The thing that gets me is that when they invented the CE notation, they went to the trouble of inventing a “BCE” notation for BC. Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory!

Also while we are fixing broken modular arithmetic, let’s add a proper modulo division operator to all the languages that got % wrong :)

[madcaptenor]

What you want is called "astronomical year numbering" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_year_numbering), so you have 1 BC = 0, 2 BC = -1, and so on. Astronomers are about the only people who would need to do math on negative years.

[tourmalinetaco]

> All we have to do to get a year 0 is decide that there was one.

But it’s not one, it’s 0