It’s for the best
🙅 zeroth, first, second, third
👉 Zerost, onest, twost, threestI’m the twost two that’s ever twoed.
Good luck standardizing English
Englist*
Northern England just got a new nickname.
She is right, using 0 index for physical stuff is stupid.
Works for floors!
i wish the people making buildings around here knew that. some start at floor 3, others at 5. some start at 0. others at 2. every building has its own story. you need to understand the building before you can understand your position in it.
if a building is built into a hillside in the uk and has exits on floors 2 and 5, which would be the ground floor?
My intuition would be floor 2, as it is the lowest floor to the ground that isn’t underground
it’s floor 5 from monday to wednesday, and floor 2 from thursday to sunday
Not on this side of the pond. We typically don’t have a ground floor, that’s just the first floor.
Your rulers start at 1? That sounds annoying.
I’ve seen a lot of rulers that actually don’t have a mark at 0 and instead go right to the edge as 0. Typically they are worn down, being made of wood, so the accuracy of the first inch is dubious. To ensure the distance is correct, sliding the ruler down one unit is a good idea. So, my ruler starts at 0 but my measurements start at 1.
That’s why decent rulers have a 0 and a margin:
It really depends on what you’re measuring. Good luck measuring the distance from a corner if you can’t get 0 to touch the end.
Tape measures are almost always designed with this in mind, so you can hook the end over an edge, or butt it up against something and the measurement will be accurate both ways, since the metal end can slide in or out by just the right amount.
since the metal end can slide in or out by just the right amount.
OMG! I genuinely thought all the tape measures I have handled were a little broken.
Just shave down the rulers margin!
Your job is to move apples from one bin to another. You pick up the first one and set it in the other bin, and say “zero.”?
When playing games with the kids, we start at 0 being the position you are currently in, then count from there.
e.g. in snakes and ladders, if you are on spot 30 and roll a 5, tap spot 30 and say “zero”, then spot 31 is “one” etc… till you are at spot 35 saying “five”.
Teaches the kids about zero and avoids miss counts from the younger ones counting their current position as “one”
There’s another way to think about it which I actually use. Look in the empty bin and say “zero”, then move an apple and say “one”.
Rulers measure cardinal quantities and not ordinal ones. There is no cardinal numbering scheme that starts at 1, all of them “start” at 0. For ordinal numbering schemes, the symbols are arbitrary anyway and you can start with whatever you want. It’s equally valid to start with 1, 0, -1, A, or “aardvark”. The only benefit to picking 1 as the start is to make it easier to count with your fingers while picking 0 lets you easily convert an ordinal quantity to a cardinal one.
Touchè
é
Why? It seems exactly as valid to me, and more valid if you like positional numberings of your physical stuff.
You just count the number of times you departed from an item in order, rather than the times you arrived.
Blame the restaurant for having a table identified as zero
Guy is wrong. Went to 0th table. She asked for 1st table.
Hey, if she thinks 1 is 1st index then you dogged a bullet and deserve better.
🐕🐕🐕
you dogged a bullet
😳
She was a lua girl, he was every other programming language guy. It was not ment to happen.
She liked embeddded apps
And he liked desktop displays
What more can I say?Hey, don’t forget the Matlab people
And R!
And abap
Even if the table is correct the instruction needs to be more precise. Is it table header or table body and in which table column?
Bullshit.
Every programmer knows that
'A'in['A', 'B', 'C', 'D']would be the 0th item; the first item is'B'I’ve been a software engineer for almost 20 years now. ‘A’, at index 0*, is the first thing in the array.
* well, unless you’re using some language that actually is not zero-indexed. I think LUA is one?
That’s because you use English, a language where ordinals traditionally begin at one.
So, based on
Every programmer knows that ‘A’ in [‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’, ‘D’] would be the 0th item; the first item is ‘B’
You’re saying I can’t be a programmer because I speak English?
1st would be ‘B’, first is ‘A’
If you want to be both wrong and confusing
If you want to use correct English and be clear don’t use ordinals: Say “index 0, index 1” etc
Save ordinals for contexts without indices: the first time through this loop, the last record"
That would be wrong in every technical sense. You’re saying that
.first()would skip the 0th item.First = leftmost.
That’s because the word “first” in
first()uses one-based indexing. In true programmer fashion it would have been calledzeroth()but that is wholly unintuitive to most humans.I maintain that the element with the lowest index is called the “zeroth” element in zero-based indexing and “first” in one-based indexing. The element with index N is the Nth element.
Indexes start from zero because they’re memory offsets, but
array[0]is still the first element because it’s an ordinal number, not an offset. It’s literally counting each element of the array. It lines up with the cardinality—you wouldn’t say['A', 'B', 'C']has two elements, despitearray[2]being the last element.Zero-based indexing redefines the meaning of the labels “first”, “second”, “third”, and so on. It adds a new label, “zeroth”, which has the same ordinal value as “first” in one-based indexing. The word “first” does not mean “the element with the lowest index” in zero-based indexing.
If you are using a zero-based numbering system, you would absolutely say that
array[2]is the final element in the array, that element having the ordinal label “second”, and yet the length of the array is 3 (cardinal). There is no fundamental connection between the ordinal labels “zeroth”, “first”, “second”, and “third” and the cardinal numbers 0, 1, 2, and 3. The similarities are purely an artefact of human language, which is arbitrary anyway. You can make an equally mathematically valid ordinal numbering system that assigns “third” to the element with the smallest index, “fourth” to the next-smallest, and so on. That ordinal numbering system is mathematically coherent and valid, but you’re just causing trouble for yourself when it comes time to convert those ordinals (such as array indexes) into cardinals (such as memory locations or lengths of fencing to buy).You can make an argument for why one-based numbering is more convenient and easier to use, but you cannot use the notion that zero-based numbering doesn’t make sense given the assumed context of one-based numbering as an argument for why zero-based numbering is invalid.
I encourage you read up what is meant by “zero based numbering” because you and everyone else who has replied to me has tried to use “but that’s not how it works in one-based numbering” as an explanation for why I’m wrong. This is as nonsensical of an argument as trying to say i (the imaginary unit) is not a number because it’s not on the number line. It’s only not a number in the domain of the real numbers. Similarly, zero-based numbering is only nonsensical in the context of one-based indexing.
It does not matter why indexes start from zero. The memory offset argument is only salient if you are using it as an argument for why computers should use zero-based numbering.
No, there is simply no such thing as “zeroth”, that’s not how ordinal numbers work. If I have the following numbered list:
-
Foo
-
Bar
-
Baz
The first item is “Foo” which is indexed 5. It is not the fifth item, because the item indexed 5 comes first in the list, so the item indexed 5 is the first item. Ordinal numbers don’t refer to index, they refer to order.
Okay, I will admit, you got me there. I did confuse indexing with numbering. From now on I will use the term “numbering” instead.
It is entirely how ordinal numbers work in zero-based numbering. There is no “right way” for ordinal numbers to work. You can create a valid ordinal numbering system starting from any integer, or just some other ordered list. You cannot assume one-based numbering is “correct” and use it as an argument against numbering beginning from any other number.
I encourage you read up what is meant by “zero based numbering” because you and everyone else who has replied to me has tried to use “but that’s not how it works in one-based numbering” as an explanation for why I’m wrong. This is as nonsensical of an argument as trying to say i (the imaginary unit) is not a number because it’s not on the number line. It’s only not a number in the domain of the real numbers. Similarly, zero-based numbering is only nonsensical in the context of one-based indexing.
Zero-based numbering would number “foo” as the zeroth element, “bar” as the first element, and “baz” as the second element. “zeroth”, “first”, and “second” are labels representing ordinals. Your list has a length of 3 (which is a cardinal quantity unrelated to ordinals).
Although, I would like to point out, it is perfectly valid to construct an ordinal labelling system that assigns “fifth” to the element with the lowest index, “sixth” to the next, and so on. That system is mathematically coherent but it is just troublesome to when it comes time to convert ordinal numbers (such as the index of the last fence-post) to cardinal numbers (such as the length of fence to buy).
But this is now getting into the weeds of pure mathematics and most people here are engineers.
-
Most humans wouldd never write the word
firstfollowed by(). It absolutely should have beenzeroth(), and would not cause any confusion amongst anyone who needed to write it.It absolutely should not have been named zeroth() because the reasoning for that is purely pedantic and ignores WHY arrays are 0 indexed. It’s not like the people in the early days of writing programming languages were saying “the zeroth item in the array” - they would refer to it using human language because they are humans, not machines. Arrays are 0 indexed because it’s more efficient for address location. To get the location in memory of an array item, it’s startingAddress + (objectSize * index). If they were 1 indexed, the machine would have to reverse the offset.
Function/Method names, on the other hand, should be written so as to make the most sense to the humans reading and writing the code, because the humans are the only ones that care what the name is. When you have an array or list, it’s intuitive to think “I want the first thing in the array” or “I want the last thing in the array),” so it makes sense to use first and last. That also makes them intuitive counterparts (what would be the intuitive counterpart to “zeroth”?).Function/Method names, on the other hand, should be written so as to make the most sense to the humans reading and writing the code
Of course—that’s why we have such classics as
stristr(),strpbrk(), andstripos(). Pretty obvious what the differences are there.But to your point, the ‘intuitive’ counterpart to ‘zeroth’ is the item with index zero. What we have is a mishmash of accurate and colloquial terms for the same thing.
My argument is purely pedantic. Pedantry is the lifeblood of programmer “humour”.
I’m not arguing that we should adopt zero-based numberingin real-life human applications. I am arguing that in zero-based numbering, the label “zeroth” refers to the same ordinal as “first” in one-based numbering. I am poking fun at the conversion between human one-based numbering and computers’ zero-based numbering. That is why I am saying it should be called
zeroth(); because human language should adapt to match the zero-based numbering their tools use. Whether I actually mean what I say—well, I leave that up to you.It does not matter why indexes start from zero in computing. The memory offset argument is only salient if you are using it as an argument for why computers should use zero-based numbering. It is not an argument against the properties of zero-based numbering itself.
No, NO! She said the FIRST table. Not table ONE. Why are women like this??? /s
1st table is not equal to table 01 because there no 0st table
0th (only first gets the -st ending; only second gets its end)
If you love me meet me at first floor
Americans 😢 British 🤷♂️
The Major: “Fighting retreat at first light”
Me alone in the trench the morning after next, woken by German voices: “Oh no!”
explanation
Exactly what this reminded me of. Thanks.
This thread is a great example of why they don’t like to let (most) software developers talk to the customers.
DROP TABLE 01;
Dangit Bobby!
The real punch line is that in a cafe run by programmers, esoteric rules are in full force, but tables 0 and 1 are no where near each other.
IS THIS Love Advice From the Great Duke of Hell??
(it’s a webcomic, I loved the story)
This would work better as Nth floor of a building
