Eh, for every use case where it's more convenient that arrays start at zero, there's one where it's more convenient that arrays start at one, and vice versa. F

Eh, for every use case where it's more convenient that arrays start at zero, there's one where it's more convenient that arrays start at one, and vice versa. For example, to get a prefix of length 'n', you need characters 0 through n-1 with zero-based indexing and 1 through n with one-based indexing. (That Python hides the -1 when using a [0:n] range is a convenience; the subtraction still happens internally.) Similarly, to get the last element of a one-based array with a[length(a)] and the last element of a zero-based array with a[length(a)-1]. What it comes down to is that sometimes you have to write +1 or -1 for zero-based indexing where you can avoid it for one-based indexing and vice versa. What is not the case is that it only universally happens for one of those schemes.