zeroth

/zeerohth/ , adj. First. Among software designers, comes from C's and LISP's
0-based indexing of arrays. Hardware people also tend to start counting at 0
instead of 1; this is natural since, e.g., the 256 states of 8 bits
correspond to the binary numbers 0, 1,. .., 255 and the digital devices
known as counters count in this way. Hackers and computer scientists often
like to call the first chapter of a publication Chapter 0 , especially if it
is of an introductory nature (one of the classic instances was in the First
Edition of K R ). In recent years this trait has also been observed among
many pure mathematicians (who have an independent tradition of numbering
from 0). Zero-based numbering tends to reduce fencepost error s, though it
cannot eliminate them entirely.

