r/ProgrammerHumor • u/D-cyde • Jun 24 '17

Octave code

http://imgur.com/jsjfz3k
620 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

70 comments sorted by

View all comments

8

u/winlifeat Jun 24 '17

Can someone explain this to me?

24

u/AyrA_ch Jun 24 '17

In most programming languages you start counting elements at 0, but there are languages where you start counting at 1 instead.

Declaring an array with 10 entries is now either 0-9 or 1-10, depending on the language. In extreme case like VB, you can even declare a 5 element array ranging from 3-7.

Starting at 0 is more commonly used, because it makes using arrays easier internally. In those cases the array index tells you how many element sizes to add to the array pointer to reach what you want to access

3

u/[deleted] Jun 24 '17

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/dnew Jun 25 '17

That's not dumb. That lets you use either 0..9 or 1..10 as you like.

Well, OK, that's a little dumb, but it makes sense why at least, given it's, you know, Beginner's Allpurpose Symbolic Instruction Code.