This seems to get posted a lot in 0 vs 1 threads as a way to end the conversation in appeal to authority, but for arguments sake, Roberto Ierusalimschy (of Lua) has explained his design choice:
> When we started Lua, the world was different, not everything was C-like. Java and JavaScript did not exist, Python was in an infancy and had a lower than 1.0 version. So there was not this thing when all the languages are supposed to be C-like. C was just one of many syntaxes around.
> And the arrays were exactly the same. It’s very funny that most people don’t realize that. There are good things about zero-based arrays as well as one-based arrays.
> The fact is that most popular languages today are zero-based because of C. They were kind of inspired by C. And the funny thing is that C doesn’t have indexing. So you can’t say that C indexes arrays from zero, because there is no indexing operation. C has pointer arithmetic, so zero in C is not an index, it’s an offset. And as an offset, it must be a zero — not because it has better mathematical properties or because it’s more natural, whatever.
> And all those languages that copied C, they do have indexes and don’t have pointer arithmetic. Java, JavaScript, etc., etc. — none of them have pointer arithmetic. So they just copied the zero, but it’s a completely different operation. They put zero for no reason at all — it’s like a cargo cult.
> When we started Lua, the world was different, not everything was C-like. Java and JavaScript did not exist, Python was in an infancy and had a lower than 1.0 version. So there was not this thing when all the languages are supposed to be C-like. C was just one of many syntaxes around.
> And the arrays were exactly the same. It’s very funny that most people don’t realize that. There are good things about zero-based arrays as well as one-based arrays.
> The fact is that most popular languages today are zero-based because of C. They were kind of inspired by C. And the funny thing is that C doesn’t have indexing. So you can’t say that C indexes arrays from zero, because there is no indexing operation. C has pointer arithmetic, so zero in C is not an index, it’s an offset. And as an offset, it must be a zero — not because it has better mathematical properties or because it’s more natural, whatever.
> And all those languages that copied C, they do have indexes and don’t have pointer arithmetic. Java, JavaScript, etc., etc. — none of them have pointer arithmetic. So they just copied the zero, but it’s a completely different operation. They put zero for no reason at all — it’s like a cargo cult.
https://habr.com/en/company/mailru/blog/459466/