Comment by tragomaskhalos

One thing I would hope there is consensus on is that 1-based indexing is easier to learn. My son is doing Python at school, and the "first-element-is-actually-element-zero" is something that has to be dinned into them, a sure sign that it is non-intuitive. In similar vein, as adult programmers we know that the half-open range is the most useful mechanism for expressing a sequence, but again we have to explain to kids that if they want the numbers 1 to 12 (eg to do a times table program) they must type range(1,13), which at that stage of their learning just seems bizarre. Actually I could go on at length about why Python is a terrible teaching language, but I'll stop there !