Date: Some time in 1994

Place: California I suppose, Sunnydale?

Event: Routine meeting of Java Pioneers

Attendees: James Gosling, Arthur van Hoff, Some anonymous JDBC hotshots

Item1: Should months in java.util.Date be one or zero based? Conclusion: obviously they should be one based. Zero based would be confusing. Everybody counts January as month 1, and December as month 12. Days of the month are not going to be zero based, so why would months be zero based?

Item 2: Should prepared statement paremeter and result set field indexes be one or zero based? Conclusion: obviously they should be zero based. Zero base is the norm in computer science and Java arrays and lists use zero based indexes: it would cause confusion to use one based indexes for JDBC classes.

Meeting adjourns. On the way out the minutes are dropped; papers get shuffled. And that is the way the Date got its indexing.