This is false. Pascal arrays start at whatever you want. As for what is happening behind closed doors (aka linker), those start at zero, but with an offset kept

This is false. Pascal arrays start at whatever you want. As for what is happening behind closed doors (aka linker), those start at zero, but with an offset kept separately (that's why C blew out of the water Pascal in terms of speed when looping through an array). And in Pascal you cannot create a dynamic array with anything other than 0-based. You are confusing arrays with strings. Those used to start at 1, but since Unicode took over (~2007) strings are implemented as zero-based too (even though you can still think of them as 1-based when writing code). Also in Delphi, when creating a cross-platform application, strings are treated as 0-based, with even multiple locations in documentation stressing this importance due to having enough differences between classic VCL and the new kid on the block (aka FireMonkey).