The easily readable structure of having an if
keyword which controls execution of a following block of code is so prevalent in programming that it seems to just be part of it.
However, programming started out with machine code that was far away from the easy to understand
if condition
do thing
What was the first time a programmer was able to use this simple and intuitive way of executing code based on a condition?
This excludes IF...GOTO
statements, as that - in the sense of this question - only allows to execute a GOTO
statement, opposed to arbitrary code. Also condition and code to execute are split up there and not together anymore.