- One-based indexing<p>setting aside whether zero- or one-based indexing is &#x27;better&#x27;; R and MATLAB have one-based indexing, so the convention is likely familiar to many in the Julia target audience.<p>still, as the OP says, (relatively) painless interoperability with C and C++ is an advertised Julia feature, both of which use zero-based index (although Fortran is one-based), and that mis-match is a definite obstacle to interoperability.