"D'Arcy J.M. Cain" <da...@druid.net> wrote in message news:mailman.1735.1281185722.1673.python-l...@python.org... > On Sat, 07 Aug 2010 13:48:32 +0200 > News123 <news1...@free.fr> wrote: >> It makes sense in assembly language and even in many byte code languages. >> It makes sense if you look at the internal representation of unsigned >> numbers (which might become an index) >> >> For a complete beginner common sense dictates differently and there >> might be confusion why the second element in a list has index 1. > > 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.
Depends whether you are counting (discrete) things, or measuring them (over a continuous range). You would start counting at 1, but start measuring from 0. -- Bartc -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list