Is it possible to change the structure of a list such that the $1$st element becomes the $0$th? That is, if $x$ is a list then $x[0]$ calls the first element of $x$.
I am writing some pseudo-codes in Maple for my Numerical Analysis course, and the index differences that I constantly have to make are a huge bother. Surely there must exist a solution?
No. But you can use an Array (and probably should, for numerical work), and set the lower and upper index bounds to your liking. For instance,
creates an Array of 100 elements with indices from 0 to 99. Arrays are often preferred to lists in this context because lists are immutable, while Arrays can be updated without copying the entire data structure.