[nkrisc]

> I also, despite being American, find the convention used in many countries of numbering building floors starting with zero to be more logical. I’m on the third floor, how many stories up did I travel to get here? Three.

Alternatively the ground floor is the first floor because it’s the first floor you arrived at when you entered the building.

The same point of view applies to 1-based indexing.

That said I prefer 0-based in programming and 1-based in buildings.

[childintime]

I never understood why they didn't picture the building, with the buttons and the room/apartment numbers at each floor... That would make all conventions clear. Going negative would be obvious, and just indicate which floor the elevator is at with LED's of backlighting.

They never heard of making a UI, and just slapped buttons.

[lproven]

> They never heard of making a UI, and just slapped buttons.

I suspect that floor numbering predates lifts (elevators) by centuries.

Stairs are ancient.

I mean, zero itself is a non-obvious concept. Its invention is a matter of historical record:

https://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/MathEd/index.php/2022/08/25/the...

... and we still use counting systems which predate the invention of zero, such as Roman numerals.