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Here's two arguments arguments in favor of 0-based 'indexing' (or offsets):
1. It is faster. Due to how memory works, 1-based languages need to subtract 1 internally every time you access an array[1].
2. It works mathematically better with some of the most common operations on array offsets, like modulo and division into round/ceil/floor. You'll be peppering your code with +1 or -1 around those a lot if you use 0-based indexing.
[1]: This is lua, for instance: https://github.com/lua/lua/blob/master/ltable.c#L701
It's also funny that a new language like Julia chose to go the 1-based route. https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/558
It seems clearly the motivation was to be in line with other mathematical languages. But then time and again I see people say Julia is supposed to replace Python in the future. Well, you've just set yourself up for a little fight there because I'd say the vast majority of programmers are used to 0-based by default, and they're not going to dick around and install packages and crap to change that default behaviour, least of all when trying to be convinced that some new language is superior.
It looks like LUA is only 7 years old: https://github.com/mniip/LUA
Do not add any more fuel to the flame and instead use 2-based indexing: https://github.com/simonster/TwoBasedIndexing.jl
Seriously, the exact value of the lower bound for indexing doesn't matter here (some algorithms are best described with the lower bound other than 0 or 1, for example). The fixed or preferred lower bound for indexing is the real problem. Any argument for/against 0-based and 1-based indexing tends to gloss over the real problem because those arguments only exist to make some languages look better than other languages. As we move away from forced explicit indexing (e.g. arr.first() or foreach instead of arr[$LBOUND] or `for (i=$LBOUND; ...)`), it becomes clear that there is no such thing like the preferred lower bound for sequences.
This is much easier to compute when everything uses 0-based coordinates.
Here is a slightly longer discussion of that in a genomics context: https://github.com/ga4gh/ga4gh-schemas/issues/121#issuecomme... and a draft of a document I wrote up (again, in a genomics context) so as never to have to have this discussion ever again: https://github.com/jmarshall/ga4gh-schemablocks.github.io/bl...