I just watched the associated video and had a "holy shit" moment at the mention of "else" as archaic English—I've been so immersed in programming for so long th

I just watched the associated video and had a "holy shit" moment at the mention of "else" as archaic English—I've been so immersed in programming for so long that I'd forgotten how uncommon and old-sounding else is, if I try to use it in common English outside a few set phrases, mostly in question form (e.g. "what else?", "how else?"). "Otherwise" and a bunch of other words suggest themselves as more obvious for this case, looking at it from that perspective. [EDIT] http://www.websters1913.com/words/Else http://www.websters1913.com/words/Else The closest to how it appears in programming is "adv. & conj." sense 2, which is pretty clearly archaic-sounding. The example given is: "For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it." which seems pretty representative to me. But more directly relevant to its use in programming languages, perhaps, it gets the manicule-denoted aside (not sure how the manicure will come across on HN): After ‘or', else is sometimes used expletively, as simply noting an alternative. "Will you give thanks, . . . or else shall I?" Shak. We use it "expletively"! How wonderful. Though we drop the "or", if we take it that way. Sense 1 is adjacent, but less closely-related to the programming use (as is clear in the examples): "1. Besides; except that mentioned; in addition; as, nowhere else; no one else." "a. & pron" definition remains modern-sounding, and is what I mentioned above the edit as the ways in which it commonly occurs in modern language. Overall, I'd say the "it was an awkward translation from German" hypothesis is pretty reasonable.