Re:Why numbering should start at zero (1982)
by cousin_it on Thursday December 15, 2016 @04:15PM
(#13188462)
I think this hits the nail on the head. Counting things from 0 instead of 1 would be nice in the real world too, not just in programming. For example, in a base 10 system, you could have exactly 10 pigs with single-digit numbers painted on their sides. That makes much more sense than the current system, where the last pig requires a two-digit number for some reason. Tonight I'll go to bed happy in the knowledge that programming isn't wrong, it's the world that is buggy.
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Re:Why numbering should start at zero (1982)
by theoh on Thursday December 15, 2016 @06:53PM
(#13189862)
Maybe you are being sarcastic, but surely the history and etymology of 0 really makes it ineligible to be used to name the first ordinal.
How can the "empty" placeholder value represent the presence of an item? It's just even more confusing than the existing situation.
Re:Why numbering should start at zero (1982)
by cousin_it on Friday December 16, 2016 @06:02AM
(#13192415)
The change is a bit mind-blowing, but in the end I really think it could work. Consider this:
"The first year of the third millennium begins at 2001/01/01 00:00:00"
Wouldn't this make much more sense:
"The zeroth year of the second millennium begins at 2000/00/00 00:00:00"
Re:Why numbering should start at zero (1982)
by rogual on Friday December 16, 2016 @07:02AM
(#13192673)
Not to mention it would eliminate the always-confusing "17th century == 1600s" thing.
Re:Why numbering should start at zero (1982)
by cousin_it on Friday December 16, 2016 @07:41AM
(#13192837)
Yeah. I expanded this to its own post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13192826