> You asked for a good argument - I provided one.

I don't see a good argument though, I just see adaption to a quirky convention.

> Either way of thinking works - I spent decades going back and forth from Fortran to C, and people are free to make their high level languages however they wish - it's trivial to move from one to the other.

Here I agree. I have no real problem using a 0-based indexed language, I adapt to it quickly (or as you mention a -1 indexed language. Julia itself actually stores type-level metadata at the -1 index of a pointer to a mutable struct)

I just dislike when people try and turn every conversation about julia into "oh it's 1-based indexed so that disqualifies it", and act like 0-based indexing is some god-given most natural way to do all indexing.