"nemesis" <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> > Oh wow. 42 years later, it still exists:
> >
> > http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd02xx/EWD215.PDF
> >
> > "Go to considered harmful."
>
> a classic!  I'm glad you've been interested in the evolution of programming
> formalisms -- and all by yourself!  Next on, the lambda papers! ;)
>
> > I also note, with some interest, what looks suspiciously like Haskell
> > syntax, in a letter typed 42 years ago. Obviously it's not after
> > Haskell, but rather whatever mathematical formalism Haskell borrowed the
> > notation from. Still, interesting none the less...)
>
> bwahahahaha
>
> you must be talking about `conditional expressions as introduced by J.McCarthy
> ("B1 -> E1, B2 -> E2,....., Bn -> En")'... although it looks like currying
> haskell notation, it's actually what it's told:  John McCarthy's conditional
> expressions for Lisp!
>
> (cond
>   ((null? ls) 0)
>   ((zero? (car ls)) 0)
>   (#t (/ n (car ls))))
>
> cond was blowderized and adapted to all other programming languages in the
> simplified form if-then-else... even Lisp provides it as well as cond!

in other words:  "I am your father!" :D

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