It is a bit to me too yes, I don't make the rules! I can make sense of it though: 0 is neutral, as expected; comments start at 1, because everybody votes for their own comment; 1 point of comment score doesn't move user karma, because increasing karma just by commenting is undesirable.
While counterintuitive it does make sense. IMO psychological perception of difference between score 0 and 1 is far greater than difference between 1 and nigher scores.
Yeah your 1 score of post / comment doesn't give your karma, but it's still show your contribution as valuable.
Upvotes are what contribute to karma, not comment scores. A comment with a score of 1 hasn't received any upvotes (okay, maybe an equal number of upvotes and downvotes).
Counterintuitive for normal mortals. Maybe not for hackers who have learned that the first element is indexed by 0. Doesn't work in fully equivalent way. But hackers use more than languages and concepts are often somewhat different between them. It's been a long time I wrote FORTRAN IV :)
