Not to mention the 1-based indexing sin. JavaScript has a lot of WTFs but they got that right at least.

▲ nine_k 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This indeed is not Algol (or rather C) heritage, but Fortran heritage, not memory offsets but indices in mathematical formulae. This is why R and Julia also have 1-based indexing.

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cmrdporcupine 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Pascal. Modula-2. BASIC. Hell, Logo.

Lately, yes, Julia and R.

Lots of systems I grew up with were 1-indexed and there's nothing wrong with it. In the context of history, C is the anomaly.

I learned the Wirth languages first (and then later did a lot of programming in MOO, a prototype OO 1-indexed scripting language). Because of that early experience I still slip up and make off by 1 errors occasionally w/ 0 indexed languages.

(Actually both Modula-2 and Ada aren't strictly 1 indexed since you can redefine the indexing range.)

It's funny how orthodoxies grow.

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teo_zero 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In fact zero-based has shown some undeniable advantages over one-based. I couldn't explain it better than Dijkstra's famous essay: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/ewd08xx/EWD831.PDF

	▲	cmrdporcupine 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's fine, I can see the advantages. I just think it's a weird level of blindness to act like 1 indexing is some sort of aberration. It's really not. It's actually quite friendly for new or casual programmers, for one.

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nine_k 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Pascal, frankly, allowed to index arrays by any enumerable type; you could use Natural (1-based), or could use 0..whatever. Same with Modula-2; writing it, I freely used 0-based indexing when I wanted to interact with hardware where it made sense, and 1-based indexes when I wanted to implement some math formula.

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IshKebab 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

And MATLAB. Doesn't make it any better that other languages have the same mistake.

▲ idle_zealot 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Does it count as 0-indexing when your 0 is a floating point number?

▲ krackers 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Actually in JS array indexing is same as property indexing right? So it's actually looking up the string '0', as in arr['0']

▲ idle_zealot 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Huh. I always thought that JS objects supported string and number keys separately, like lua. Nope!

  [Documents]$ cat test.js
  let testArray = [];
  testArray[0] = "foo";
  testArray["0"] = "bar";
  console.log(testArray[0]);
  console.log(testArray["0"]);
  [Documents]$ jsc test.js
  bar bar
  [Documents]$

▲ nvlled 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Lua supports even functions and objects as keys:

  function f1() end
  function f2() end
  local m1 = {}
  local m2 = {}
  local obj = {
      [f1] = 1,
      [f2] = 2,
      [m1] = 3,
      [m2] = 4,
  }
  print(obj[f1], obj[f2], obj[m1], obj[m2], obj[{}])

Functions as keys is handy when implementing a quick pub/sub.

▲ aidenn0 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They do, but strings that are numbers will be reinterpreted as numbers.

[edit]

  let testArray = [];
  testArray[0] = "foo";
  testArray["0"] = "bar";
  testArray["00"] = "baz";
  console.log(testArray[0]);
  console.log(testArray["0"]);
  console.log(testArray["00"]);

	▲	minitech 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That example only shows the opposite of what it sounds like you’re saying, although you could be getting at a few different true things. Anyway: - Every property access in JavaScript is semantically coerced to a string (or a symbol, as of ES6). All property keys are semantically either strings or symbols. - Property names that are the ToString() of a 31-bit unsigned integer are considered indexes for the purposes of the following two behaviours: - For arrays, indexes are the elements of the array. They’re the properties that can affect its `length` and are acted on by array methods. - Indexes are ordered in numeric order before other properties. Other properties are in creation order. (In some even nicher cases, property order is implementation-defined.) `{ let a = {}; a['1'] = 5; a['0'] = 6; Object.keys(a) } // ['0', '1'] { let a = {}; a['1'] = 5; a['00'] = 6; Object.keys(a) } // ['1', '00']`

▲ bigstrat2003 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There's nothing wrong with 1-based indexing. The only reason it seems wrong to you is because you're familiar with 0-based, not because it's inherently worse.

▲ coliveira 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If you can't deal with off-by-one errors, you're not a programmer.

	▲	jancsika a minute ago \| parent [-]
		But with Lua all those errors are now off by two

▲ chrisweekly 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Except for Date.