Yeah, you can simulate that stuff with lambdas. For that matter, you can simulate function calls by following conventions in assembly language. That's what I me

Yeah, you can simulate that stuff with lambdas. For that matter, you can simulate function calls by following conventions in assembly language. That's what I meant by "awkward/difficult". Surely you'd concede that you're happy to have syntactic support for if-statements and lambdas? Given that, it's not a stretch to imagine that syntax could be useful in other scenarios.