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I can understand the rationale for 0 and 1. I can even understand the rationale for a arbitrary range (from -5 to +10) in current era where languages have itera

I can understand the rationale for 0 and 1. I can even understand the rationale for a arbitrary range (from -5 to +10) in current era where languages have iterated for many generations. However I did not understand why they would have a range in the early days of programming. On one hand it would have been hard to make a language and its compilers and then you add arbitrary ranges?

aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago
Early programmers were mostly mathematicians and physicists, so the notation borrowed a lot from their fields, where it's common to index sequences with arbitrary numbers. And it's not particularly complicated to implement either.