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Dijkstra is right, of course. However, most math texts still use 1-based indexing. If you want to translate them into code, it's easier when the conventions mat

• scheme271 1y ago
  Good luck getting a community with literally hundreds of years of literature using 1 based indexing to change.
  • Skeime 1y ago
    I did have one or two math professors who would use x_0 and x_1 instead of x_1 and x_2 when they had to name two objects. But I have also seen places where 1-based indexing was used despite being "obviously wrong". I don't quite recall what it was, but there was sequence of objects A_1, A_2, ... and a natural way of combining A_k and A_l to get A_(k + l - 1). Had the indices been shifted by 1 to be 0-based, the result would have been A_(k + l), which would be much nicer to work with.
• toolslive 1y ago
  He (Dijkstra) even mentions this in the article: > The above has been triggered by a recent incident, when, in an emotional outburst, one of my mathematical colleagues at the University —not a computing scientist— accused a number of younger computing scientists of "pedantry" because —as they do by habit— they started numbering at zero.