I have to offer a counter view to this. Using letters of the alphabet as an analogy isn't accurate to me. Each letter we accept as an element... so a true analogy would be to put a Space as the first character of the alphabet, to indicate the absence of a letter.
Zero indicates the absence of a value in our numbering system. If I have a single apple, I have 1 Apple, not 0 Apples. Thus if I have 1 element in an Array I have element[1], not element[0]. It is more natural for us to use numbers not by their cardinal position in a set, but by their inferred value... because they represent quantities.
I am one of those who feels the confusion around zero bounded indexes leads to countless issues because it is counter-intuitive to how we use numbers in real life. I agree it is beaten into developers that this is how is should be, but to me we would have been further ahead to let developers accept what comes intuitively.
Zero indicates the absence of a value in our numbering system. If I have a single apple, I have 1 Apple, not 0 Apples. Thus if I have 1 element in an Array I have element[1], not element[0]. It is more natural for us to use numbers not by their cardinal position in a set, but by their inferred value... because they represent quantities.
I am one of those who feels the confusion around zero bounded indexes leads to countless issues because it is counter-intuitive to how we use numbers in real life. I agree it is beaten into developers that this is how is should be, but to me we would have been further ahead to let developers accept what comes intuitively.