Python "why" questions

[Roy Smith]

In article <4c6a8cff$1 at dnews.tpgi.com.au>,
 Lie Ryan <lie.1296 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 08/16/10 21:54, David Cournapeau wrote:
> > On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 9:53 AM, Gregory Ewing
> > <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
> >>> On Aug 7, 2010, at 9:14 PM, John Nagle wrote:
> >>>
> >>>>  The languages which have real multidimensional arrays, rather
> >>>> than arrays of arrays, tend to use 1-based subscripts.  That
> >>>> reflects standard practice in mathematics.
> >>
> >> Not always -- mathematicians use whatever starting index is
> >> most convenient for the problem at hand.
> > 
> > Yes, there are many engineering fields where index starts at 0. Partly
> > for the reason you have stated concerning polynomials, especially
> > since this extend to series, which are pervasive in numerical
> > computing. In linear algebra, though, I remember to have always noted
> > matrices indexes in the [1,n] range, not [0,n-1].
> 
> I'm sure some would prefer to denote it as [0, n)

Only if there's an emacs mode which can do the parenthesis matching 
correctly ;-)