Maybe, but then they'd just become discussions about whether `y` in the `x[y]` syntax "should" be an offset or an index. Which one gets the language priority?

Maybe, but then they'd just become discussions about whether `y` in the `x[y]` syntax "should" be an offset or an index. Which one gets the language priority? ...Of course, the answer is offset, because offsets are beautiful, composable, elegant things that harmonize with bitmasks, modulo, array slices, and everything else, while (one-based) indexes are nothing but "offset plus one", no more useful than "offset plus two".