> In this sense everything is an arbitrary definition Hmm, no, not really. While definitions are, indeed, by definition arbitrary, different concepts are of di

> In this sense everything is an arbitrary definition Hmm, no, not really. While definitions are, indeed, by definition arbitrary, different concepts are of different usefulness, and as such, definitions that use more useful concepts can reasonably be considered better definitions of given terms. There is no such advantage in using the binary 000 to represent the first index, though, except in so far as it results from the binary 000 representing the neutral element of addition, which corresponds to the natural number 0. The latter is the part that's actually not arbitrary. > there never is one for naming Well, the whole point kindof is that it's not about naming, but about arithmetic. If you only want to name stuff, you can use strings and hash tables, or letters of the alphabet, or whatever other set of symbols that you can come up with, it's really to a large degree a matter of taste. But there is a distinctive feature of arrays vs. other collection data types: You can do arithmetic on its indices. And arithmetic with a number type that doesn't have a zero is braindead.