On Apr 9, 2016 8:11 AM, "Ben Coman" <btc@openinworld.com> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Apr 9, 2016 at 6:16 AM, Damien Pollet <damien.pollet@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 8 April 2016 at 22:57, Sven Van Caekenberghe <sven@stfx.eu> wrote:
> >>
> >> Since we are simpler and more logical, a cheat sheet should not confuse
> >> people by describing what we are not.
> >
> >
> > I beg to disagree. "Simpler and more logical" is just your biased point of
> > view; fact is, zero-based indexing is just more widespread in programming
> > languages.
> >
> > I would be happy to be proven wrong about that, but I seriously doubt most
> > people that come to Smalltalk have never been exposed to programming before.
> > It's not unreasonable to assume that they've started programming in any one
> > of the most popular languages these days, and that that language is
> > zero-indexed. So mentioning that in Smalltalk the first element is indeed at
> > index 1 is pretty essential, if just to lift the ambiguity.
>
> +1.�� But to follow Sven's point exactly.�� We don't need to say we are
> "not 0 based", just that we are "1�� based".

And we do not need to know most of the time since we have a pretty decent collection API. Or for matrixes for that matter.

Phil
>
> cheers -ben
>