this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2023
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It's just semantics. When you are born, you are in your first year of life, not your zeroth year of life. After a full year, you are one year old. Grammar varies from language to language, and sometimes one feels more natural.
Imagine everyone in English said "I'm in my 32nd year" instead of "I'm 31 years old." Now you meet a foreigner who says the opposite. Translation issues abound!
There are one type of person in this world. Those that understand arrays, and those that don't.
Jokes on you, my religion is Fortran ;)
My birthday can only be expressed in Lua
Edsger W. Dijkstra had some things to say on the topic back in 1982
Also, years themselves are technically numbered in this same "dumb" way: the Common Era (secular version of Anno Domini, "In the Year of our Lord") began with 1 CE, not "Year zero", because it was supposedly the First Year of Christ (and the concept of zero didn't even exist then). Not that it really matters, because IIRC nobody knows the actual date (if any) of the birth of that Christ character to within a single year anyway.
Admittedly, it was more than 500 years after this Christ character, as you so amusingly notate, that they even started counting. And the concept of zero as a number was in place by then. The concept of zero as nothingness, or void, is much older. So really, the index from 0 or 1 debate is now at least 1500 years old ;)
While I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek when I said "that Christ character", I was also trying to be accurate: there are people who believe Christ was 100% made-up (and lots of others who don't of course), and I don't know enough about it to say for sure.
Personally, I'm an agnostic atheist, so I'd need to see some actual evidence before I could honestly say I believe he did exist, but I'm not gonna say I know he didn't exist either.
To be fair, we do the same shit with what century we are in.
You're absolutely right. But as most people don't measure their age in centuries (yet), it isn't a problem.
I'm hoping the debate emerges when I'm in my 7th century.
Pity. My great-grandmother died at 103. She would often declare. "I'm One hundred and three, you know. " Towards the end. I think If I had thought at the time to say. "You're in your second century" At the time. She would have taken huge pleasure is telling everyone that for her last few months.
You mean when you're 6 centuries old?
Exactly 😂