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Computer Science Educators

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    $\begingroup$ Indeed BCPL seems to be origin of 0-based indexing. We can try to explain to ourselves or to pupils why indexing starts from 0, but the fact is that it only does so in certain languages, and that most of those do so out of historical reasons. This blog shines some light on the origin of 0-indexing: exple.tive.org/blarg/2013/10/22/citation-needed $\endgroup$ Commented Sep 6, 2018 at 12:37
  • $\begingroup$ Nice blog article. I'm amused by the notion that we're more likely to have heard of Eben Upton than of Martin Richards. $\endgroup$ Commented Sep 6, 2018 at 13:31
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    $\begingroup$ ... It reflects that the author is clearly digging into software history for the first time and is suprised by his discoveries, thinking that perhaps no-one else knows this. However, his conclusions are a bit inconsistent. Zero based indexing in BCPL was an inevitable consequence of having pointers rather than arrays as the fundamental data structuring concept, it wasn't to make array indexing more efficient. $\endgroup$ Commented Sep 6, 2018 at 13:38
  • $\begingroup$ Since we're on Computer Science Educators, I might mention that Martin Richards and Steve Bourne between them probably taught me everything I really needed to know about programming -- mainly by example; they both wrote beautiful code. $\endgroup$ Commented Sep 6, 2018 at 13:42