As someone who does quite a lot of image and signal processing the fact that their arrays are 1-based is a complete deal breaker. The first few years of my career I worked with Matlab and I hated 1-based arrays with a passion. I think I never encountered a situation where the Matlab way makes stuff easier, almost always the 0-based index is the more natural choice. After I switched to Python/C I can say that I never…
I've always had a very hard time understanding how someone can do something requiring a high level of abstraction (programming), but cannot subtract one. It's simply amazing.
I've used several languages in both camps, and you know what? When I'm in Matlab I start my indeces at 1, and in C i start at 0. Who would have thought it would be that simple!