python list index - an easy question

[Michael Torrie]

On 12/18/2016 09:21 AM, BartC wrote:
> On 18/12/2016 10:59, Paul Götze wrote:
>> Hi John,
>>
>> there is a nice short article by E. W. Dijkstra about why it makes sense
>> to start numbering at zero (and exclude the upper given bound) while
>> slicing a list. Might give a bit of additional understanding.
>>
>> http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd08xx/EWD831.PDF
> 
> (This from somebody who apparently can't use a typewriter?!)
> 
> I don't know if the arguments there are that convincing. Both lower 
> bounds of 0 and 1 are useful; some languages will use 0, some 1, and 
> some can have any lower bound.
> 
> But a strong argument for using 1 is that in real life things are 
> usually counted from 1 (and measured from 0).
> 
> So if you wanted a simple list giving the titles of the chapters in a 
> book or on a DVD, on the colour of the front doors for each house in a 
> street, usually you wouldn't be able to use element 0.

It also depends on whether you want to number the spaces between the
objects or the objects themselves. To use your DVD example, the first
chapter will probably be starting at time zero, not time one.

In another example, babies start out at "zero" years old not "one."  But
at the same time we refer the first year of life.  Maybe it's not a
phrase much used these days but it used to be common to say something
like "in my 15th year," meaning when I was 14.  Maybe a more common use
would be "the first year of my employment at this company."

I'm not sure it makes sense to having slicing be zero-based but indexing
itself be 1-based, but I think a case could have been made (though I'm
glad it was not).