I'm an Actuary and though I've built various packages using MS Office mostly
using VBA I would not say I have a software engineering background.

I find index 0 difficult to work when working with arrays in the abstract
(maybe something to do with being slightly dyslexic) but in my work I don't
find origin 0 a hindrance.  Often in actuarial applications the index
represents time in a projection of some sort with t=0 being  today so it is
natural this is the element in the results array.

Patrick


On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 2:16 PM, 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.
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