G'day all.
Quoting Benjamin Franksen
For what it's worth, I have been asking myself the same question several times. If/then/else syntax could be replaced by a regular (lazy) function without any noticeable loss.
I believe that if-then-else cannot be replaced by a regular function for the same reason that regular function application and ($) are not identical. The loss may not be noticeable, but it's still a loss. It could be replaced by a case-switch-on-Bool, though.
IMHO, the next standardized version of Haskell, however named, should abandon the special if/then/else syntax so we'll have at least /one/ item where the language becomes smaller and simpler.
The de facto Haskell philosophy, if you read the history paper, is to have a small core language with a lot of syntactic sugar. The syntactic sugar is specified by translation to the core language. The small core ensures that Haskell remains simple. If you discount changes in the type system, the Haskell core language is as simple now as it was in 1989.
Remember: Perfection is reached not when there is nothing more to add, but rather when there is nothing more to take away.
Perfection is asymptotically approached when arbitrary restrictions are removed and special cases are dumped in favour of general, theoretically sound, principles. Perfection will never be reached in a practical programming language, but it may be asymptotically approached. Cheers, Andrew Bromage