There is a huge difference between explaining how indexes come from offsets and understanding operating systems. I think more emphasis should be put on the insane amounts abstractions underlying the high level language at hand when teaching programming. Explaining that 0-based indexing comes from offests seems like a good start in that direction for a kid learning python.

And when beginners won't be beginners anymore they'l have to learn how the underlying abstractions work anyway. A programmer that doesn't at least superficially understand how operating systems work is not going to be able to write performant or secure software, let alome combine those qualities.