Right, it makes sense when dealing with machine code and when making the compiler do extra work for you (converting one-based to zero-based indexing) would be too much work for the compiler implementer or is too slow (like on machines back in the 70s and 80s) or it would abstract too far from what is happening underneath the hood, possibly leading to errors.

But like many features of programming languages and operating systems (case-sensitivity, global menu bar, python's colon...), zero-based indexing is something that made perfect sense in the context and time in which it was originally designed and implemented, but it's really no longer necessary in most cases today, and only survives because of tradition and blind cargo cult-like copying of what others did before.