[asimpletune]

O you’re right. How could I forget the first minute of each day is 12:01, or that a previously unknown computer exploit is called a 1-day exploit.

And everybody knows a pandemic starts with patient 1!

[bazoom42]

The patient-0 terminology arose from a misreading of the label patient-O, where O is the letter O.

When numbering discrete elements you usually start with 1, so first is 1, second is 2 etc.

Indexes in C are not ordinal numbers though, they should be thought of as offsets or distances from the first element. So [0] is 0 steps away from the first element, hence the first element. The confusion arise when you think these indices are actually ordinal numbers.

[asimpletune]

I agree with all of this.

The original discussion was regarding there's no such thing as a zeroth X, and what I've been trying to say this whole time is sure there is, it's the beginning. Which is why you start counting time from 0.

Interesting about patient-O though. I didn't know that.

My previous comment may have seemed snarky, but that wasn't my intention. I tried to originally write something that didn't seem sarcastic but it was just long.

The best way to explain my point was to just to agree and then list the contradictions that arise, e.g. The day starts at 12:01 since there's no zeroth minute, etc... and that unfortunately has the effect of looking like snark.

[numice]

That's a neat way of thinking.