On Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:30:15 -0700 (PDT), woo...@gmail.com wrote: >Counting from zero through n-1 is used because it is the memory offset >and not any kind of counter. Simplified, if you are iterating through >a list, using a for loop or anything else, the first element/number is >at memory offset zero because it is at the beginning. And if this is >a list of 4 byte integers, the offset for the second element is 1*4 >bytes, etc. This idea, that somehow the first element of a list is >the zero element is a fairly recent abnormality AFAIK. It perhaps >comes from assumptions by people who are not familiar with what >happens inside of a programming language, assuming incorrectly, that
I thoughts high level languages were created primarily so we don't have to think about what happens inside a programming language, memory offsets and the like. >the (programming) world was created in their own image, and so >programming languages were generated in the way that they think they >were. This is a bad assumption for any programmer. Instead one >should get in the habit of saying, in general as well as in this >specific case, "This doesn't make sense. I wonder how __I__ screwed >this up." Hopefully this will be helpful advice. Taking the attitude >that you have screwed up yet again will get to the heart of the >problem, and save many hours of frustration wondering why "this >language/computer doesn't do what it is supposed to do". Why do we try to create languages that are intuitive to humans, then ? Lada -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
