On 09/08/2015 09:56 AM, Steven D'Aprano wrote: > http://exple.tive.org/blarg/2013/10/22/citation-needed/ > > It's a wonderful read.
I read this article, but I'm still uncertain to what his point actually is. It's a great review of the history of C, some batch computing, and IBM's CEO's penchant for boat racing. He tries to say that 0-based indexing made for faster compiling, but given the runtime nature of BCPL's ! operator, I don't see how it wouldn't affect runtime also. He also says that saying pointers are the reason for 0-based indexing then you're wrong, except that BCPL's creator says in this same article that array variables are essentially pointers. A few people tried to point this out in the comments but the author simply lambasted them, saying thinks like, "Thanks for leaving a comment. I'm sure it's made you feel clever." Like I say I guess I must have missed his point in there somewhere. I suppose his point is C is 0-based because BCPL was, and I'm sure that's true, but I'm also sure K&R saw some benefits to keeping this in C. In any case, 0-based indexing in Python makes a lot of sense when you bring in the slicing syntax. Especially if you think of slicing as operating on the boundaries between cells as it were. I used a 1-based indexed language (BASIC) for many years, and I was always having to subtract 1 from things. So 0-based is simply more convenient for me. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
