Sure, but I don't think anyone's complaining about how you would assign race completion position labels in a programming language. Surely you would do something

Sure, but I don't think anyone's complaining about how you would assign race completion position labels in a programming language. Surely you would do something like this: // Start the position at one, because that's how we // assign number labels to finishers in a race. let position = 1 // Create a callback that will assign a label to // each competitor when that competitor finishes // the race. let assignLabel = (competitor) => { competitor.label = position position = position + 1 } // Begin the race, and pass it a callback that will // be run each time a competitor finishes the race // (in the order they finish). race.begin(assignLabel) Note that this "label" really is just a label. It happens to be an integer here, but we could also use a library that outputs English strings like "first", "second", "third", etc. This debate is focused more on how elements in an ordered collection are accessed.