To be honest, I actually agree that Dijkstra's argument seem a bit one sided. It's also interesting to see the argument in your linked article that offset and index doesn't have to be the same.

If I get the root of the argument in the linked article, it is that zero-based indexing is more of a optimization than anything, but I would disagree; there are reasons beyond that (see the examples in my previous comment).

Also, here's an example of an 1-index based system that has caused me some headaches: In music theory, the first note of the scale is called the "first", etc. It also talks about e.g. "stacking thirds", which means take the third of the scale, than take the third from there. However, the offsets are two. (first=offset 0, second=offset 1, third=offset 2). Which is hard to work with in my opinion.

You have an interesting argument about iterating backwards, although I would say; if we need a tie-breaker between the two, iterating forward should have more weight than backwards.

I appreciate your comment, and while trying as best I can to be convinced of the "other side", I still land on 0-indexing. The only argument I buy, is that it matches our natural language starting at 1. Which, of course, is a strong argument.