On Apr 1, 7:08 am, Lada Kugis <lada.ku...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Wed, 1 Apr 2009 00:40:17 -0700 (PDT), Carl Banks > > > > > > <pavlovevide...@gmail.com> wrote: > > >Lada, > > >I am also an engineer, and I can tell your idea of intuitive is not > >universal, even among engineers. I certainly do not lean toward one- > >based indexing. > > >From a programming standpoint--and remember Python is a programming > >language--zero-based indexing eliminates the need for a whole lot of > >extra +1s and -1s when indexing, slicing, and iterating, a lot more > >than it causes, and that is worth the "cost". This might not be > >apparent to you if you never tried seriously taking advantage of > >indexing from zero, or if your programming experience is very narrow. > >These both seem to be true for you, so you'll just have to take my > >word for it. > > You have repeated several cs based points already stated. But apart > from a programming standpoint - could you give a few examples, where > "on paper" (as to avoid stepping into "programmer's territory") zero > indexing could be more intuitive ?
That's beside the point. Python's job is to be usable as a programming language. It made a decision to use zero-based indexing so as to simplify programming usage. Therefore, that's what you have to use for matrix indices, whether it is intuitive for you or not. I have no real opinion whether zero- or one-based indexing works best on paper for engineering calculations, except that it's a trivial consideration. > (of course, taking into account your previous based calculations, > which are based on 1 indexing - I imagine you still use matrices with > a11 as a first element) I don't know what you're referring to by my previous based calculations, and the sentences doesn't make sense, so I can't answer this. FTR: I use zero-based matrix indices when I'm using a language with zero-based indexing, and one-based indices when using a language with one-based indexing. Simple as that. You should do the same. Carl Banks -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
