In article <1ej5t4930m29h0f6ttpdcd83t08q2q3...@4ax.com>, Lada Kugis <lada.ku...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 01 Apr 2009 01:26:41 GMT, Steven D'Aprano > <ste...@remove.this.cybersource.com.au> wrote: > > > > >Why Python (and other languages) count from zero instead of one, and > >why half-open intervals are better than closed intervals: > > > >http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2008/06/26/why-computer-scientists-count-from-z > >ero/ > >http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD831.html > > steven, thanks for answering, > > yes, i saw the second one a little time ago (someone else posted it as > well in really cute handwriting version :) and the first time just > now, but the examples which both of them give don't seem to me to be > that relevant, e.g. the pros don't overcome the cons. > > imho, although both sides (mathematical vs engineer) adress some > points, none of them give the final decisive argument. > i understand the math. point of view, but from the practical side it > is not good. it goes nicely into his tidy theory of everything, but > practical and intuitive it is not. as i said, being an engineer, i > tend towards the other side, so this is biased opinion (nobody can be > unbiased) but from a practical side it seems unpractical for > engineering problems (and to me, the purpose of computers is to help > humans to build a better world, not to prove theories - theories are > useless if they don't help us in reality. so we should try to adapt > computing to real world, not our world to computers). There is nothing more practical than a good theory. --- James Clerk Maxwell You said you came from the C world (besides Fortran). If so, you have already seen array indexing starting with 0 and going to n-1. Why, then, should Python be so foreign to you? -- -- Lou Pecora -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
