Counting from zero seems natural. Doesn't it?
TL;DR: Start counting from one instead of zero. Like humans do.
-
Bijection from real-world broken
-
Cognitive load
-
Overly implementation-oriented code
- Favor high-level declarative languages
Low-level languages force you to think at a machine level.
Hardware turning machines were designed to use binary gates and start indexing at 0.
A few programming languages use one-based indexing, where indexing starts from 1.
These languages are known for being higher level and more declarative:
- Basic / Visual Basic
- Pascal
- Smalltalk
- Fortran
- Lua
- MATLAB
- R
- Julia
package main
import "fmt"
func main() {
numbers := []int{10, 20, 30, 40, 50}
for i := 0; i < len(numbers); i++ {
// Iteration goes from zero to len-1
fmt.Println(numbers[i])
}
}numbers = [10, 20, 30, 40, 50];
% Looping through the array using one-based indexing
% from 1 to length
for currentIndex = 1:length(numbers)
disp(numbers(currentIndex));
end[X] Automatic
This is a language smell.
- Low-level optimized code
- Declarative Code
We need to think as humans when we code and not as machines.
Humans count from one.
Zero number was a brilliant discovery in math and science but it does not apply to everyday counting.
Code Smell 53 - Explicit Iteration
Code Smell 123 - Mixed 'What' and 'How'
Code Smells are my opinion.
Photo by Andy Kelly on Unsplash
Pay attention to zeros. If there is a zero, someone will divide by it.
Cem Kaner
Software Engineering Great Quotes
This article is part of the CodeSmell Series.
How to Find the Stinky Parts of your Code
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You will find several recipes like this one with a higher level of detail
