An interesting perspective is what this does to pointers in terms of unsigned representation, effectively making 0 a special case which could be used for null. But in practical terms it would just limit 32 bit systems to 31 bits of adressable memory, or make pointer arithmetics wierd. The latter isnt that much of a problem, as its only when pointers are basic types it matters, and free pointer arithmetics is a mistake whose only advantage is compiler speed, not even application speed.

For instance, even in slicing, [start:end) eliminates this issue. Though there is something to be said for verbosity.

I think this becomes an argument for 0 based indexing, but a case could be made to the opposite.

That said, consistency is what is valuable, so the only truly wrong answer would be the one we use in real life.