> Related, about point three. When pacing (aloud) a distance I normally> see people step at the star and count "one, two, three...", no "start"> or "zero" "one, two, three", but that may be a local custom.
If you want to index the positions, where you started, would that be "one step" or "zero steps"?
I don't get it, why everybody is always talking about "counting". Again and again. Nobody is actually ever counting anything, especially data. Even the computer isn't exactly "counting" if you query #array (dunno what the current implementation is, is it still look at the array part counter and then do a divide by half search on the hash part to find an "edge"?). Anyway, what's happening all the time is indexing and indexing only. There is no "counting" only addressing/indexing. What index the first (yes first item) should have, is the question. Does it have index 1 or index 0? I still wonder how the "it's all about counting cows and steps" people can leave with the fact the first year of a decade has a 0. That's so unnatural! After 1999 should come 2111, would be much more natural.
And that's the next thing that's IMO awkward in this discussion. Throwing around "natural". As it would have been somehow wanted by nature. Despite the name "natural number" which has a clear mathematical definition, there is nothing more "natural" or "unnatural". However, there are things that are more in tune with our cultural upbringing in school etc. and things that aren't. As Roberto brought decimal numbers, why almost all programming languages use those as default? Well because we live in a 10-base system world all around us. 12 and 60 systems long died out and only some remnants like time (24 hours, 60 minutes, 60 seconds) remind us once there was a time not everything was 10-based, even outside specializations for ordinary people. Yet sometimes a 16-based system is still and often used in programming, when considered for that task at hand to be beneficial.
