Please explain my confused me like I’m 5 (0r 4 or 6).

  • Reil@beehaw.org
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    7 months ago

    I feel you’ve missed the point I was making and assumed I’ve made another. Age number and year number are different. You’re in your first year when your age is not yet 1. You’re in your second year when your age is between 1 and 2.

    Years follow numbers as in "this year was the first/second/third year of ", not “this year was the year turned X years old”

    • jsomae@lemmy.ml
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      7 months ago

      Oh I see. Sure, historically it makes sense that years have been ordinal numbers. But in the modern era with all our math and computational knowledge, it is not convenient anymore. It means off-by-one errors are easy to commit when comparing BC and AD years.

      This is why programming languages all index from 0 rather than 1 (knuth and lua be damned)