On Aug 18, 2:01 pm, AK <andrei....@gmail.com> wrote: > On 08/17/2010 10:15 PM, Russ P. wrote: > > > > > On Aug 7, 5:54 am, "D'Arcy J.M. Cain"<da...@druid.net> wrote: > > >> Would said beginner also be surprised that a newborn baby is zero years > >> old or would it be more natural to call them a one year old? Zero > >> based counting is perfectly natural. > > > You're confusing continuous and discrete variables. Time is a > > continuous variable, but a list index is discrete. > > > Take a look at any numbered list, such as the top ten football teams > > or the top ten software companies. Have you ever seen such a list > > start with zero? If so, where? I sure haven't. > > > When I studied linear algebra way back, vector and matrix indices also > > always started with one, and I assume they still do. > > > The convention of starting with zero may have had some slight > > performance advantage in the early days of computing, but the huge > > potential for error that it introduced made it a poor choice in the > > long run, at least for high-level languages. > > Besides that, the way things are now, it's almost an Abbot & Costello > routine: > > - How many folders are there? > - 5 > - Ok, give me the fourth one. > - Here. > - No, that's the last one! > - That's what you said! > - No, I said, fourth one! > - That's what I did! > - How many are there in all? > - I already said, five! > - You gave me the last one!! > - Just like you said - fourth!!!!
Yes, it's confusing. Which element of a list is the "first" element? Wait, "first" is sometimes abbreviated as "1st". So is the 1st element the 0 element or the 1 element? I honestly don't know. Is the top team in the league the number 1 team -- or the number 0 team? I have yet to hear anyone call the best team the number 0 team! Unfortunately, we're stuck with this goofy numbering system in many languages. Fortunately, the trend is away from explicit indexing and toward "for" loops when possible. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
