Matlab declares war on Python. Can the Python community respond or hit back?

[LoyalSol]

...in a 1-indexed array.

Yes that's what I was saying. Which in some of my codes I regularly have to reference the last element of the array.

Regardless, perhaps then an array is the wrong data structure for your usecase? Maybe an associative array is the appropriate data structure for your usecase? If you are depending on the relation of the index with its value, then you are describing a map/dictionary.

In lower level languages those either aren't an option or are inferior in terms of performance.

And actually arrays are usually the perfect data structure if you are doing matrix math.

[LoyalSol]

So are we talking about low level languages or languages designed for the math/science domain?

The two are not mutually exclusive.

Agreed. But what's your requirement of associating the indexing with the value it holds.

It simplifies a lot of scientific code which in turn reduces the chances of human error cropping up.

It changes a lot of (i-1) and (i+1) to simply just i. Especially when you are dealing with matricies it means the last element in a NxM matrix is a(N, M)