Why does the indexing start with zero in 'C'?

Question

Why does the indexing in an array start with zero in C and not with 1?

Answer 1

Try to access a pixel screen using X,Y coordinates on a 1-based matrix. The formula is utterly complex. Why is complex? Because you end up converting the X,Y coords into one number, the offset. Why you need to convert X,Y to an offset? Because that's how memory is organized inside computers, as a continuous stream of memory cells (arrays). How computers deals with array cells? Using offsets (displacements from the first cell, a zero-based indexing model).

So at some point in the code you need (or the compiler needs) to convert the 1-base formula to a 0-based formula because that's how computers deal with memory.