Skip to main content
Post Migrated Here from stackoverflow.com (revisions)
Post Made Community Wiki
Source Link
Loki
Loki

Personally, the one argument is when seeing array indexes as offsets. It just makes sense.

One could say that its the first element, but the offset of the first element relative to the origin of the array is zero. As such, taking the array origin and adding zero will yield the first element.

So in computing its easier to add zero to find the first element than to add one and then remove one.

I think anyone who did some lower level stuff always think the base zero way. And the people who are beginning or used to higher level often not-algorithmic programming might wish for a base one system. Or maybe we are just biased by past experiences.