On Apr 1, 9:08 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 ?
Here's an easy example: Standard Positional Number Systems. 765 in octal is 7 * 8**2 + 6 * 8**1 + 5 * 8**0 123 in decimal is 1 * 10**2 + 2 * 10**1 + 3 * 10**0 666 in hexadecimal is 6 * 16**2 + 6 * 16**1 + 6 * 16**0 0-based indexing is kinda important. > (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) > > Lada- Hide quoted text - > > - Show quoted text - -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
