To build on this, related to the theme of blocks: Smalltalk syntax is almost entirely free of magical constructs that you can't easily replicate in user code (o

To build on this, related to the theme of blocks: Smalltalk syntax is almost entirely free of magical constructs that you can't easily replicate in user code (off the top of my head `self`, `super`, the `[]` syntax for blocks, and compile-time literals can't be replicated), literally everything in Smalltalk is messages to objects (or method calls on objects in contemporary OO terms); thus a conditional which would be `if() { ... } else { ... }` in an Algol language is done by passing the `ifTrue:ifFalse:` message to a boolean object. Thus, if you need a custom control structure, you can implement them yourself and it'll be just like any other control structure in the language.