Counting is usually done with natural numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting.

The Wikipedia link does not back-up your claim in the slightest. On the contrary, it states:

> The traditional way of counting consists of continually increasing a (mental or spoken) counter by a unit for every element of the set

Wikipedia is known for many things but not for its wisdom. Counting is counting things. For example sheeps. You don't have 0 sheeps. Either you have 1 or 2 or 3 or you don't have any. If there are software engineers, things change because they treat 0 as an element of the list and 0 is the first in the list 1 the 2nd, etc.

> Wikipedia is known for many things but not for its wisdom.

I was not the one who posted a Wikipedia link. I was only responding to the fact that the Wikipedia link did not support the prior poster's claim.

> Counting is counting things. For example sheeps. You don't have 0 sheeps. Either you have 1 or 2 or 3 or you don't have any.

Not having any sheep is literally having 0 sheep.

> Not having any sheep is literally having 0 sheep.

Only if you ignore the difference between having and not having.

How is this ignoring the difference? The statements 'I do not have any sheep' and 'I have 0 sheep' are synonymous; neither statement ignores the other.

Those statements are synonymous in SW. Try to explain this concept to a shepperd :)

People typically start counting with 1 which is why this is the first year of the second decade this century, and 2001 was the first year of the current millennium, etc. USA buildings start with 1 (or first) floor being on the ground.

Age in most countries starts with 0 but not all.

Still, I think one-based is best considered “normal”

It is downright bizarre to me at how people are continuing to claim that 'normal counting' does not require a 0 until you go past 9.

If users here genuinely believe that, then I trust if I sell you a product for £1.01, you will give me £2?

0s are fundamentally used in normal counting.

But people don't generally count in decimals, they'd count out one pound and one penny.

So you'd count out 1 pound and 1p, 1 pound and 2p... 1 pound and 9p, 1 pound and 10p - so you don't need the zero until 10.

But you're just proving my point: you get to 1 pound and 10p before you get to 2 pounds. So you get to a zero, 1.10, before you reach 2. That's the point of decimals that I am not understanding why people are ignoring.

Then you are counting pennies not pounds, so you're still starting at 1.

In other words, you start mentally counting from your smallest unit of precision in use.

This is a fun thought exercise, but what a pointlessly pedantic tangent this thread took…

Absolutely, but then, the thread itself is a bit pointless, and pedantry is a pastime on HN :)

I agree, in practical terms you're counting two things - pennies and pounds. You need a zero for the pennies counter before you need a two for the pounds counter for sure.

But you don't count 'I have one hundredth of a pound, I have one fiftieth of a pound, I have three hundredths of a pound, I have a twenty-fifth of a pound' and so on.