Disclaimer: I don't care about this argument one way or another. However I found the author missed the point (as perhaps many commenters did?)
"...nowadays, all arguments that say that indexes should be 0-based are actually arguments that offsets are 0-based, indexes are offsets, therefore indexes should be 0-based. That’s a circular argument..."
Yes, that is a circular argument. It's not the one I would use. C made the decision that indexes and pointers are the same thing. It's a logical argument and one that's not circular. If they're separate things, then yes, you end up in a circle.
For languages that are not C-like, you could argue "pick an idiom and stick with it across multiple languages" or "make programming languages easier for humans to understand" Both of those arguments are preferential arguments. Perhaps there could be a study comparing the merits of each, but I haven't seen one yet.
I like chocolate ice cream. I like making pointers and arrays as similar as possible. I like being able to collapse pointer arithmetic down. I like doing huge mallocs and then playing around with large, empty hunks of memory. Some folks don't. I get it. Code should look like the way we think about the problem. That's an ideal state we'll never reach, but it's worthy of continued discussion.
It's missing 'since indexes are 0-based, they're offsets".
Edit: if I would make this argument, I'd say the assumption that indexes are offsets is baseless. This is easily proven since there are languages where this isn't true. However I would argue the problem based on practical merits: the reason there no 1-based index op-code exists is because no dominant programming language has 1-based indexing. Which is a self-fulfilling prophesy.
I didn't want to go there, but yes. If I had called that out, it would lead to a discussion about just what is meant by the term "offset". Defined broadly enough, the point worked for the author.
In general, I try to find the most general point and rebuttal as possible. These discussions tend to dive into pedantry and semantics. I'm just trying to do my part to engage the author where they are. ymmv
"...nowadays, all arguments that say that indexes should be 0-based are actually arguments that offsets are 0-based, indexes are offsets, therefore indexes should be 0-based. That’s a circular argument..."
Yes, that is a circular argument. It's not the one I would use. C made the decision that indexes and pointers are the same thing. It's a logical argument and one that's not circular. If they're separate things, then yes, you end up in a circle.
For languages that are not C-like, you could argue "pick an idiom and stick with it across multiple languages" or "make programming languages easier for humans to understand" Both of those arguments are preferential arguments. Perhaps there could be a study comparing the merits of each, but I haven't seen one yet.
I like chocolate ice cream. I like making pointers and arrays as similar as possible. I like being able to collapse pointer arithmetic down. I like doing huge mallocs and then playing around with large, empty hunks of memory. Some folks don't. I get it. Code should look like the way we think about the problem. That's an ideal state we'll never reach, but it's worthy of continued discussion.