3 ms·

You are just citing cultural factors like how we happen to do things in the English language, not any logical argument.

InsideOutSanta 2y ago
Are there any languages that call the first element the zeroth element in everyday speech? I can't think of one, Google can't come up with one, and neither can ChatGPT. This isn't just cultural; it's universal or almost universal.
- nl 2y ago
  Not zeroth but ground floor vs 1st floor in buildings is common.
  - InsideOutSanta 2y ago
    That's a good example! Elevators sometimes have a 0 for the ground floor, but they often have an "E" in German-speaking countries or a "C" in English-speaking countries. In this example, people also call the floor with index 1 the "first floor," although they don't call the ground floor the zeroth floor, as you say. Since floors can go below ground, the first underground floor is floor -1, so everything works out. There's a floor for every number, unlike with 1-based floor numbering, where floors go from -1 to 1.
    - bloak 2y ago
      "C"? It's more likely to be "G" round here. By the way, has anyone else had this problem: you're on floor 10, say, and you want to get to floor 15, say, so you run up 5 flights of stairs and try to find the room but then after a while you realise that somehow you've ended up on floor 16 so you think you're going demented and can't count but after this has happened a few times you realise ... THE IDIOTS HAVE OMITTED FLOOR 13! If there's one thing worse than 1-based indexing it's leaving-out-13-based indexing ... Has any programming language tried doing that with arrays, I wonder?
      - InsideOutSanta 2y ago
        > It's more likely to be "G" round here I see what you did there. Somebody should create a programming language that implements all real-world number idiosyncracies. Don't have 4 or 13; define π as 3 and τ as 6, print 6 three times every time it occurs for good luck (or bad luck, depending on where you live), replace all numbers close to 8 with 8 in money values for great prosperity, have a constant for "dozen" that's 13 in case you're counting loaves of bread, have a rounding function that rounds to a close number that's easy to say depending on your locale... And let's go with 0.5-based indexing as a compromise.

Are there any languages that call the first element the zeroth element in everyday speech? I can't think of one, Google can't come up with one, and neither can ChatGPT. This isn't just cultural; it's universal or almost universal.

nl 2y ago
Not zeroth but ground floor vs 1st floor in buildings is common.
- InsideOutSanta 2y ago
  That's a good example! Elevators sometimes have a 0 for the ground floor, but they often have an "E" in German-speaking countries or a "C" in English-speaking countries. In this example, people also call the floor with index 1 the "first floor," although they don't call the ground floor the zeroth floor, as you say. Since floors can go below ground, the first underground floor is floor -1, so everything works out. There's a floor for every number, unlike with 1-based floor numbering, where floors go from -1 to 1.
  - bloak 2y ago
    "C"? It's more likely to be "G" round here. By the way, has anyone else had this problem: you're on floor 10, say, and you want to get to floor 15, say, so you run up 5 flights of stairs and try to find the room but then after a while you realise that somehow you've ended up on floor 16 so you think you're going demented and can't count but after this has happened a few times you realise ... THE IDIOTS HAVE OMITTED FLOOR 13! If there's one thing worse than 1-based indexing it's leaving-out-13-based indexing ... Has any programming language tried doing that with arrays, I wonder?
    - InsideOutSanta 2y ago
      > It's more likely to be "G" round here I see what you did there. Somebody should create a programming language that implements all real-world number idiosyncracies. Don't have 4 or 13; define π as 3 and τ as 6, print 6 three times every time it occurs for good luck (or bad luck, depending on where you live), replace all numbers close to 8 with 8 in money values for great prosperity, have a constant for "dozen" that's 13 in case you're counting loaves of bread, have a rounding function that rounds to a close number that's easy to say depending on your locale... And let's go with 0.5-based indexing as a compromise.