Context is also helpful. “I’m not sure what’s novel about function composition” is a little bit of a smug take on a language and concept that was pretty cutting

Context is also helpful. “I’m not sure what’s novel about function composition” is a little bit of a smug take on a language and concept that was pretty cutting edge back in the early 80s. Now we Meat-and-Potatoes Programmers know the composition is useful, but I’d be hard pressed to find first-class composition in 1980 in any popular language that wasn’t {academic, Lisp}.