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So does: APL, AWK, COBOL, Fortran, Lua, Mathematica, MATLAB, R, Smalltalk, Wolfram Because it is Mathmatics and have 1 be based on 0 makes no sense, you then

So does: APL, AWK, COBOL, Fortran, Lua, Mathematica, MATLAB, R, Smalltalk, Wolfram Because it is Mathmatics and have 1 be based on 0 makes no sense, you then have to switch between the two and it is easy to make a mistake. This is why I don't use Python and Pandas. I got burnt once and that was enough and switched to R. Sadly we are stuck with 0 based array in programming and due to a historical issue.

pjmlp 8y ago
You have forgotten Algol, PL/I, Pascal, Oberon, Oberon-2, Active Oberon, Component Pascal, Mesa, Mesa/Cedar, Modula-2+, Modula-3, Eiffel, Basic,... Although in Wirth inspired languages, actually the indexes are flexible, but by convention 1 gets used.
nadam 8y ago
0 based arrays is objectively the preferred way for me and not for historical reasons. I write a lot of low level graphics algorithm stuff, and 1-based arrays would complicate index arithmetic. like now with everything 0 based having something like: arr[offset1 * 32 + offset2] would be the following if all my offsets would be 1-based and arrays would be 1-based: arr[(offset1 -1) * 32 + offset2] which is pretty arbitrary...
- syockit 8y ago
  You could reshape it (https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/base/arrays/#Base.reshape https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/base/arrays/#Base.reshape). But if you're interfacing with libraries written with C interface you'd still have to subtract for both offset1 and offset2.
- baldfat 8y ago
  Historically 0 based is for low level languages. 0 based makes sense for C. My issue is higher level languages Python, Java, C# there is plenty of things that just are complicated and doing arrays off 0 is one of them. Doing data science or statistics just makes it obvious that you have two different sets on numbers. 1 doesn't mean the same thing in every instance in your programming and the functional programming side of me hates that.
- b_tterc_p 8y ago
  “Objectively preferred for me” sounds an awful lot like it’s subjective
- oblio 8y ago
  A ton more people do high level programming, than low level programming. You guys build the tools and many more people use them.
- simondanisch 8y ago
  that may be your impression, because you dont know julia's powerful, no overhead indexing abstractions yet ;) i also write lots of graphics low level code, and i couldn't be more glad that i don't need to do those error ridden indexing calculations anymore, since they're simply not needed... note, that you can also seamlessly create new array types that store 0 indices into other arrays - and because of julia's great composability, i can make them work with my indexing agnostic algorithms while being 0 overhead compatible with opengl's memory layout :)
sammorrowdrums 8y ago
It's the difference between numbering the contents of the list (1 indexing), and measuring the distance from the beginning of the list to the start of the item (0 indexing). Personally I'm happy to switch between both, and they both have positives and negatives when I actually write code. 0 indexing is not incorrect, or incompatible with maths, it is just a different way of conceiving of lists/arrays by considering the index to more like the distance from the beginning. The first item begins 0 spaces from the start position. That is why in that context array length is usually the highest index + 1, because length is the distance from the start position to the end of the list, whereas the index is the start position of the item in the list. I will concede that 0 indexing is a little too close to the storage paradigm for arrays (i.e. a sequential list of items of n bytes) and that when so often these arrays point to more complex data-structures / objects, the distance doesn't make as much sense as the item number... but meh - I'd take Python generators / iterators at the expense of 0 indexing any day.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >It's the difference between numbering the contents of the list (1 indexing), and measuring the distance from the beginning of the list to the start of the item (0 indexing). The problem is that one is indeed an indexing (numbering the contents 1...X...N and asking for item X, customers[X]), whereas the other is not, but is used as an indexing (e.g. customers[5] is not getting the 5th item but the sixth).
  - Twisol 8y ago
    Where does your definition of "an indexing" originate? The word "index" literally means "to point at" (hence, index/pointer finger), and in this sense, every element may indeed be indexed -- in this case, by means of a unique integer. If I had to give a name to the concept you're talking about, it would be an "ordinal index".
    - coldtea 8y ago
      >If I had to give a name to the concept you're talking about, it would be an "ordinal index". Which is both the naive understanding of a numeric index in everyday life in general, and the most common case in mathematics (and most math/scientific software).
tombert 8y ago
I had a job about 7 years ago doing Coldfusion and Flash. Coldfusion is 1 indexed and Actionscript is 0 indexed...this threw me off enough to the point of having a near-religious aversion towards explicit indexing, and while I've largely drunk the functional Kool-aid where I almost exclusively use maps and filters and reduce. I really do with the 1 indexing had stayed around, since I feel like it's more natural to say the 1st element, instead of the 0th.
- phkahler 8y ago
  >> I really do with the 1 indexing had stayed around, since I feel like it's more natural to say the 1st element, instead of the 0th. It's not the 0th element. It is the 1st element and has an offset of 0 from the beginning of the array. Not saying it's better or worse, but that if you change the words you use to describe it, you may find it easier to use. To my surprise, I just learned that ranges in Rust don't include the end number which felt incredibly stupid from a conceptual point of view (python too). But is syntactically useful when doing: for x in 0..len(my_array) { My preference would be that a range include the end number and the language provide more python-like iterators and list comprehensions. I am aware that there is a library that provides more python-like syntax, but that doesn't change the oddness of ranges in either language. I guess I just need to remember that the interval is open on one end. Which brings to mind the notion of using [0..n] or [0..n) in a language...
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >It's not the 0th element. It is the 1st element and has an offset of 0 from the beginning of the array. It should be indexed with its position then a[1], as we do in all other aspects of life (and in math), and not with it's offset.
    - umvi 8y ago
      > as we do in all other aspects of life You mean like elevators? You may be surprised to learn that elevators in America are 1-indexed (ground floor == floor 1), but in Europe they are 0-indexed (ground floor == floor 0).
contravariant 8y ago
For what it's worth mathematics is more than flexible enough to handle both 0 and 1 based indexing. Using 1 based just looks neater since you can count x_1, ..., x_n rather than x_0, ..., x_{n-1}. Sometimes both are used at the same time e.g. if you add an extra coefficient at the start rather than at the end, this happens particularly when dealing with wedge products where the parity of the new index matters. Also it's usually a bad sign if you need to worry too much about what index you used, you might be better of using index sets with whatever structure you need (and only the structure you need). In program languages that support it generous application of ranges and generators tends to get rid of most complications.
- baldfat 8y ago
  The issue is 1 will mean different things. That should be a bigger issue than anything else. When you are doing math 1 + 1 = 2 always means two. When you are getting the 1 column we are getting the second column. This while makes sense when doing certain lower level programming this makes no sense with functional or higher level programming.
- bobochan 8y ago
  VBA actually lets you decide at the top of each module whether to use 0 or 1 based indexing. The default value is 0, but you can specify "Option Base 1" to change that. There is an interesting note in the Wikipedia page for "Dartmouth BASIC" which says the second edition "also allowed arrays to begin as subscript 0 instead of 1. This was especially useful for representing polynomials."
dmix 8y ago
+ Elixir: Regex and Binary indexes are zero-based, List and Tuple are one-based
- yellowapple 8y ago
  Are they, though? The relevant functions in Enum all seem to be zero-based, for example: iex> [:foo, :bar, :baz] |> Enum.at(1) :bar Not that it really matters anyway. Like with Erlang, in the vast majority of cases where I'd normally reach for querying a list element by index, pattern matching is the better / more idiomatic option. Compare: foo = list |> Enum.at(0) bar = list |> Enum.at(1) baz = list |> Enum.at(2) rem = list |> Enum.slice(3..-1) with: [foo, bar, baz | rem] = list Both give you the exact same values of foo/bar/baz/rem, but the latter is arguably more readable and concise, and entirely avoids the 0 v. 1 debate.
pjacotg 8y ago
Dijkstra makes an interesting argument for 0 based indexing in EWD831. https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD831.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/E...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

pjmlp 8y ago

You have forgotten Algol, PL/I, Pascal, Oberon, Oberon-2, Active Oberon, Component Pascal, Mesa, Mesa/Cedar, Modula-2+, Modula-3, Eiffel, Basic,... Although in Wirth inspired languages, actually the indexes are flexible, but by convention 1 gets used.

nadam 8y ago

0 based arrays is objectively the preferred way for me and not for historical reasons. I write a lot of low level graphics algorithm stuff, and 1-based arrays would complicate index arithmetic. like now with everything 0 based having something like: arr[offset1 * 32 + offset2] would be the following if all my offsets would be 1-based and arrays would be 1-based: arr[(offset1 -1) * 32 + offset2] which is pretty arbitrary...

syockit 8y ago
You could reshape it (https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/base/arrays/#Base.reshape https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/base/arrays/#Base.reshape). But if you're interfacing with libraries written with C interface you'd still have to subtract for both offset1 and offset2.
baldfat 8y ago
Historically 0 based is for low level languages. 0 based makes sense for C. My issue is higher level languages Python, Java, C# there is plenty of things that just are complicated and doing arrays off 0 is one of them. Doing data science or statistics just makes it obvious that you have two different sets on numbers. 1 doesn't mean the same thing in every instance in your programming and the functional programming side of me hates that.
b_tterc_p 8y ago
“Objectively preferred for me” sounds an awful lot like it’s subjective
oblio 8y ago
A ton more people do high level programming, than low level programming. You guys build the tools and many more people use them.
simondanisch 8y ago
that may be your impression, because you dont know julia's powerful, no overhead indexing abstractions yet ;) i also write lots of graphics low level code, and i couldn't be more glad that i don't need to do those error ridden indexing calculations anymore, since they're simply not needed... note, that you can also seamlessly create new array types that store 0 indices into other arrays - and because of julia's great composability, i can make them work with my indexing agnostic algorithms while being 0 overhead compatible with opengl's memory layout :)

sammorrowdrums 8y ago

It's the difference between numbering the contents of the list (1 indexing), and measuring the distance from the beginning of the list to the start of the item (0 indexing). Personally I'm happy to switch between both, and they both have positives and negatives when I actually write code. 0 indexing is not incorrect, or incompatible with maths, it is just a different way of conceiving of lists/arrays by considering the index to more like the distance from the beginning. The first item begins 0 spaces from the start position. That is why in that context array length is usually the highest index + 1, because length is the distance from the start position to the end of the list, whereas the index is the start position of the item in the list. I will concede that 0 indexing is a little too close to the storage paradigm for arrays (i.e. a sequential list of items of n bytes) and that when so often these arrays point to more complex data-structures / objects, the distance doesn't make as much sense as the item number... but meh - I'd take Python generators / iterators at the expense of 0 indexing any day.

coldtea 8y ago
>It's the difference between numbering the contents of the list (1 indexing), and measuring the distance from the beginning of the list to the start of the item (0 indexing). The problem is that one is indeed an indexing (numbering the contents 1...X...N and asking for item X, customers[X]), whereas the other is not, but is used as an indexing (e.g. customers[5] is not getting the 5th item but the sixth).
- Twisol 8y ago
  Where does your definition of "an indexing" originate? The word "index" literally means "to point at" (hence, index/pointer finger), and in this sense, every element may indeed be indexed -- in this case, by means of a unique integer. If I had to give a name to the concept you're talking about, it would be an "ordinal index".
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >If I had to give a name to the concept you're talking about, it would be an "ordinal index". Which is both the naive understanding of a numeric index in everyday life in general, and the most common case in mathematics (and most math/scientific software).

tombert 8y ago

I had a job about 7 years ago doing Coldfusion and Flash. Coldfusion is 1 indexed and Actionscript is 0 indexed...this threw me off enough to the point of having a near-religious aversion towards explicit indexing, and while I've largely drunk the functional Kool-aid where I almost exclusively use maps and filters and reduce. I really do with the 1 indexing had stayed around, since I feel like it's more natural to say the 1st element, instead of the 0th.

phkahler 8y ago
>> I really do with the 1 indexing had stayed around, since I feel like it's more natural to say the 1st element, instead of the 0th. It's not the 0th element. It is the 1st element and has an offset of 0 from the beginning of the array. Not saying it's better or worse, but that if you change the words you use to describe it, you may find it easier to use. To my surprise, I just learned that ranges in Rust don't include the end number which felt incredibly stupid from a conceptual point of view (python too). But is syntactically useful when doing: for x in 0..len(my_array) { My preference would be that a range include the end number and the language provide more python-like iterators and list comprehensions. I am aware that there is a library that provides more python-like syntax, but that doesn't change the oddness of ranges in either language. I guess I just need to remember that the interval is open on one end. Which brings to mind the notion of using [0..n] or [0..n) in a language...
- coldtea 8y ago
  >It's not the 0th element. It is the 1st element and has an offset of 0 from the beginning of the array. It should be indexed with its position then a[1], as we do in all other aspects of life (and in math), and not with it's offset.
  - umvi 8y ago
    > as we do in all other aspects of life You mean like elevators? You may be surprised to learn that elevators in America are 1-indexed (ground floor == floor 1), but in Europe they are 0-indexed (ground floor == floor 0).

contravariant 8y ago

For what it's worth mathematics is more than flexible enough to handle both 0 and 1 based indexing. Using 1 based just looks neater since you can count x_1, ..., x_n rather than x_0, ..., x_{n-1}. Sometimes both are used at the same time e.g. if you add an extra coefficient at the start rather than at the end, this happens particularly when dealing with wedge products where the parity of the new index matters. Also it's usually a bad sign if you need to worry too much about what index you used, you might be better of using index sets with whatever structure you need (and only the structure you need). In program languages that support it generous application of ranges and generators tends to get rid of most complications.

baldfat 8y ago
The issue is 1 will mean different things. That should be a bigger issue than anything else. When you are doing math 1 + 1 = 2 always means two. When you are getting the 1 column we are getting the second column. This while makes sense when doing certain lower level programming this makes no sense with functional or higher level programming.
bobochan 8y ago
VBA actually lets you decide at the top of each module whether to use 0 or 1 based indexing. The default value is 0, but you can specify "Option Base 1" to change that. There is an interesting note in the Wikipedia page for "Dartmouth BASIC" which says the second edition "also allowed arrays to begin as subscript 0 instead of 1. This was especially useful for representing polynomials."

dmix 8y ago

+ Elixir: Regex and Binary indexes are zero-based, List and Tuple are one-based

yellowapple 8y ago
Are they, though? The relevant functions in Enum all seem to be zero-based, for example: iex> [:foo, :bar, :baz] |> Enum.at(1) :bar Not that it really matters anyway. Like with Erlang, in the vast majority of cases where I'd normally reach for querying a list element by index, pattern matching is the better / more idiomatic option. Compare: foo = list |> Enum.at(0) bar = list |> Enum.at(1) baz = list |> Enum.at(2) rem = list |> Enum.slice(3..-1) with: [foo, bar, baz | rem] = list Both give you the exact same values of foo/bar/baz/rem, but the latter is arguably more readable and concise, and entirely avoids the 0 v. 1 debate.

pjacotg 8y ago

Dijkstra makes an interesting argument for 0 based indexing in EWD831. https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD831.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/E...

deleted 8y ago

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