I am the undisputed math Luddite around here; and, while I consider myself a developer, I have no formal training there either.
Having always considered an index as a way to express an offset from the "first" item, a 0 index origin is, to me, the only sensible option. A 1 origin (never set quad IO to 1 in APL) just leads to off-by-one errors, although it is less of a problem in an array-oriented language. On Jul 24, 2010, at 9:16 AM, Roger Hui <[email protected]> wrote: > I have been asked by some APL colleagues about > index origin 0 in J. The question is, does the choice > of a fixed value of 0 for index origin a hindrance to > your work? The question is specifically addressed > to "ordinary domain experts", people with no > software engineering in their background and are not > professional mathematicians. > > In case you did not know, in APL there is a choice > known as the index origin, controlled by the variable > quad-io, of counting from 1 instead of from 0, affecting > the left argument of { and the result of i. , among other things. > I will say no more than this to avoid biasing your answers. > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
