On: Why numbering should start at zero (1982)

[goatlover]

Don't R, Matlab & Julia make heavy use of array-like data structures?

[VHRanger → goatlover]

Yes, but those arrays are based on the concept of the mathematical vector.

Whereas C and descendents see arrays as chunks of memory.

In C arrays it makes sense to think of the index as an offset (0 elements away from the start, etc.).

In math its more consistent with classic matrix notation.

[goatlover → VHRanger]

Agreed, what's weird to me is how high level languages like Python and JS adopted C's indexing. But I guess that's the huge C influence on the programming community. Most of us learn programming being taught zero-based indexing.