I blame Java. ;-) (Destiny)

by Xenos , Shores of Time, Saturday, August 27, 2016, 12:43 (3103 days ago) @ ZackDark

I blame C. Who the hell starts a list at index 0, you silly assembly wizards?

Almost everyone, not just C. It's because it makes it easier to calculate the range of an array. If you start at 1 you have to subtract 1 every time you want to find the range of an array, but if you start at 0 you don't. Considering 99.999% of people will never see an array anyway it makes sense to make it easier to program form, not to mention when the precursor of C (BCPL I think?) was written I'm positive that one less operation probably made a very significant difference in efficiency.

Edit:
Also here's a good answer on why they even use 0-11 instead of 1-12 for months: http://stackoverflow.com/a/18002968

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So, who's going to disturb the remains tonight? - dogcow, 2016-08-25, 20:06
- How is that possible? - Claude Errera, 2016-08-25, 20:09
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  - Calendars are hard. - dogcow, 2016-08-26, 12:23
    - This is what you get for using them backwards - ZackDark, 2016-08-26, 13:40
      - I blame Java. ;-) - dogcow, 2016-08-26, 20:35
        
        I blame Java. ;-) - ZackDark, 2016-08-27, 12:33
        
        I blame Java. ;-) - Xenos, 2016-08-27, 12:43
        
        That stackoverflow post was pretty satisfying, actually - ZackDark, 2016-08-27, 17:25
        
        +1 for yyyy-mm-dd - someotherguy, 2016-08-27, 13:20
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I blame Java. ;-) (Destiny)