I assume you're not arguing that humans got it wrong to ever count from 1. So you must mean that when counting things, we start from 1 and when indexing we start from 0. Like, "that dog has 4 legs", but when you refer to them it's the "0th leg, 1st leg, 2nd leg and 3rd leg"? This seems weird. It's true that then the first - sorry, 0th - leg is 0 from the start of the array. But it also means that the last element of the array is one less than its size. You'd also struggle to do the operation of counting. You'd have to remember, am I indexing or counting?

If you say so! Maybe you should start a foundation to encourage humanity to change its counting behaviour. The effective altruists might throw you a couple of million.

It's subjective because you haven't defined or quantified elegance or understandability. I could say that zero based indexing is not in fact understandable based on the amount of confusion I encounter explaining the concept to new users. I could say it's inelegant based on the fact it makes algorithms I use harder to implement. Others argue it's more elegant because it makes algorithms they use easier to implement. Same rationale, subjective conclusions.

Dijkstra's argument as well hinges on an undefined notion of "ugliness", which can mean anything to anyone. That's why these conversations never end, because most people are talking past one another based on their own definitions of "elegance" or "ugliness".

No, this is not the fundamental meaning of an index, it is simply the interpretation that you are using to make it easier to deal with for you personally. In my opinion, the fundamental meaning of an index is a number referring to element number `n`, so that `a[1]` is the first element, etc. But I don't begrudge you your working definition.

For some reason, people who are used to 1-based indexing generally recognize that both interpretations are perfectly fine, and that each works well in different contexts. For some other reason, people used to 0-based indexing feel so intellectually superior that they are unable to see the other side of the argument.

Yes, precisely. Indexing and counting are different operations.

I referenced that one in my post. It hinges on a concept of “ugliness” which as I said can mean anything to anyone. It also presumes that this argument based on ugliness is the only one; even if we take his entire argument at face value, that the method he proposes is more “beautiful” than the rest and we agree on what that means, we still can’t say it’s the preferred methods in situations where beauty or ugliness of code doesn’t matter, because Dijkstra doesn’t even acknowledge they exist.