I understand how you mean. It's just that in my experience from all fields, except programming and more complex use of math, this zero state is glossed over or ignored completely in vast majority of cases. Zero is not mentioned, even if assumed. Absence may be mentioned, but not as "zero".fishmonkey wrote:the thing is, when counting in natural numbers, we add to the count when we have another complete item/object. when i have no oranges, i have zero oranges. i have one orange when i have the whole object in my hand. if you are doing push-ups, you count one after the first push-up, not before. similarly, i have one minute when a minute has passed.
arguably it is actually music counting that is "unnatural", so to speak. we count '1' before anything has happened. zero time has passed. in this sense, music counting is a special case.
hence why i think the misunderstanding by the first poster is not unreasonable, and why it's not a matter of programmers versus "normal" people...
Maybe your experience is different from mine, which, if so, would actually be very interesting in itself.
Thanks for clarifying. Zero is really an interesting concept.