Raphael Gillett wrote the following on 16.07.2007 15:22 :
> [...]
> The pebble in the Ruby shoe is the counter-intuitive use of indexing of
> elements of arrays, strings, etc., from 0 to n-1 instead of the more
> natural 1 to n.   Like prisoners who have got used to their chains, the
> Ruby community seems to have meekly accepted this impediment to clear
> thinking.   It is particularly puzzling that Ruby should hobble its
> users in this way, because it is manifestly unnecessary (e.g., Fortran
> and Pascal don't do it).
>
>   

It's probably a matter of taste: I'm so used to indices starting at 0 
that I would probably create a lot of bugs if I had to use arrays with 
indices starting at 1.

For me an index has simply become a distance from the first element of 
an array.

Anyway changing this would probably break at least 99% of all Ruby code 
out there, so it's not likely to happen, is it?
 
Lionel.