Ignoring the past; 0 indexing is: - closer to hardware - makes index == element wise offset from the first element - there are both algorithm which are (very

Ignoring the past; 0 indexing is: - closer to hardware - makes index == element wise offset from the first element - there are both algorithm which are (very slightly) easier to implement with 0 and 1 indexing, AFIK more of the "bread and butter" algorithm are easier with 0 then 1 (e.g. indexing of C-style arrays used all the time, heaps etc.) - 0 is not special => less bounds checks in typed languages (if you have an unsigned int index you only have to check the upper bounds, with 1-index you also have to check for 0) - 0 is not special => with signed integer you can have negative indices (from the end) in which case all signed integers are valid (but potential out of bounds), with 1 indexing you have a "gap" in the middle which for some (rare) use cases can be very painful to handle So independent of what the history was. It's just much more pragmatic to use 0-indexing in many common use-cases. Especially given that 1-indexing produces more special cases for very common use-cases makes it sub-optimal for both usability and performance.