At the same time, as sixth graders, we were at the perfect age for the argument that the "year 2000" was actually meaningless. It was a deceptively elegant concept right in the wheelhouse of our comprehension ability: there was no year zero. The calendar started at 1 A.D., presumably when Jesus was still wailing His holy wails and shitting His holy uh-ohs.
Every kid heard this. Every kid thought about it. There was no year zero. If the world was going to end, it would happen at the real turn of the millennium a year later.
Maybe it's because I lived through the last time starting a list at 1 was popularly relevant that I can't stand the current trend of starting lists at zero.
I think it's a tech-influenced thing. I first saw it in Jira, where our product team had tasks arranged by priority: there was P1, P2, and P3, which was short for "never going to happen." Way up at the top, P0 was a blister on the ass of the whole team until it got solved. Priority zero. Wow. "This should have been done yesterday!!"
Starting a list at zero makes sense when it refers to an item so urgent it needs to be, or is, going on currently. It does not make sense in any other capacity. As just a cool, techy way to stylize a list, it's nonsensical. The first thing that comes up is 1. Not zero.
The product team uses it to distinguish something so important that it's somehow above the first item on the list. What's next, task -1?
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