Python "why" questions

[MRAB]

rantingrick wrote:
> On Aug 7, 9:10 am, Steven D'Aprano <st... at REMOVE-THIS-
> cybersource.com.au> wrote:
>> On Sat, 07 Aug 2010 08:54:28 -0400, D'Arcy J.M. Cain wrote:
>>> On Sat, 07 Aug 2010 13:48:32 +0200
>>> News123 <news1... at free.fr> wrote:
>>>> It makes sense in assembly language and even in many byte code
>>>> languages. It makes sense if you look at the internal representation of
>>>> unsigned numbers (which might become an index)
>>>> For a complete beginner common sense dictates differently and there
>>>> might be confusion why the second element in a list has index 1.
>>> Would said beginner also be surprised that a newborn baby is zero years
>>> old or would it be more natural to call them a one year old?  Zero based
>>> counting is perfectly natural.
>> There's nothing natural about saying that a baby is zero years old. A
>> newborn baby is "a newborn baby", then it's "one day old", "two days
>> old", ... "one month old", "two months old", ... "one year old".
> 
> Well not if you are referring to how people "say" things. But what
> people "say" and the facts of reality are some times two different
> things. Heck we even have a few folks in this group who overuse the
> expression "used to" quite frequently in place of the more correct
> term "previously" -- i won't give names. But if i did i would start at
> index zero!
> 
There's nothing wrong with "used to", but "more correct"? It either _is_
correct or _isn't_ correct.

And it's "I", not "i". :-)

> When any object is "born" (whether it be a life form, or a planet, or
> even a class instance) "it" will be zero years old until 1 year of
> time has passed has passed. If you want to properly describe age you
> could say a baby who was born five minutes ago is...
> 
>  - 0 millenniums

millennia

>  - 0 centuries
>  - 0 decades
>  - 0 years
>  - 0 months
>  - 0 days
>  - 0 hours
>  - 5 minutes
>  - 60*5 seconds
>  - (60*5)*1000 millisecond
>  - crikey i'm tired!
> 
> Just because Aunt Martha is is too lazy to list out the details that
> has no effect on reality. YES a newborn is zero years old. YES, a
> newborn is zero months old, ...an so on.