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call the doctor, the CS doctor (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 years ago by hairinmybellybutt@lemmy.world to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev

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[-] BorgDrone@lemmy.one 58 points 2 years ago

Are you indexing your fingers or counting them ?

Indexing starts ar 0 but counting starts at 1.

[-] FriendOfElphaba@sh.itjust.works 27 points 2 years ago

This.

One of the reasons indexing starts at zero is because back when we used to use pointers and memory addresses, the first byte(s) of an array were at the address where the array was stored. Let’s say it is at 1234. If it was an array of bytes, the first data element was at 1234, or 1234 + 0. The second element would be at 1235, or 1234 + 1. So the first element is at location 0 and the second at location 1, where the index is actually just an offset from the base address. There may be other/better reasons, but that’s what I was taught back in the 90s.

Counting always starts at 1 (if we’re only using integers). You don’t eat a hamburger and say you ate zero hamburgers.

[-] BatmanAoD@programming.dev 5 points 2 years ago

"used to"?

[-] FriendOfElphaba@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 years ago

Perchance programming with pointers has plunged as a percentage of programmers.

But thank you. I was hoping someone would notice that.

[-] dukk@programming.dev 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Well, you don’t really see many people accessing lists with pointers directly. Also 0-indexing does give us an extra number to index with(say 1-255 vs 0-255)

Edit: 0-255, not 0-256