You can use "else" that way in ordinary speech. "If this then do that else do the other thing" is perfectly legitimate English, just a bit archaic.
> 1903, Jack London, The Call of the Wild, Grosset & Dunlap, page 44:
> […] and his first experience taught him an unforgetable lesson. It is true, it was a vicarious experience, else he would not have lived to profit by it.
As an aside there is at least one common word which does seem to have been invented by the software industry: "access" as a verb
The comic Calvin & Hobbes corroborates the novelty of this verb in this strip from 1993: https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/01/25
Really? That’s surprising because the French and Spanish equivalent verb (accéder / acceder) is common and has multiple meanings such as “reaching a peak”. I would have imagined this word transferred over in the Norman days.
Maybe it’s because “to accede” is also an English verb but acquired a different meaning from the Latin root.
Acceding to a computer system doesn’t make sense like it does in French or Spanish, so the noun was turned back into a different verb.
But is it pronounced the same way? I stress the first or the second vowel depending on the case.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial-stress-derived_noun
Examples: "Go to college or else work for your uncle"
Turn this into boolean form: "If you go to college then <foo> or else you will work for your uncle"
But the "or" makes the meaning ambiguous: "If it rains then I will work inside or else I will work outside."
It is not clear if this means you will work outside if and only if it is not raining? Maybe working outside is another option if it rains.
Otherwise is far more clear. "If it rains then I will work inside otherwise I will work outside."
Removing the "or" completely makes the statements unambiguous archaic English: "If you go to college then <foo> else you will work for your uncle" "If it rains then I will work inside else I will work outside."
FWIW - I am very glad they chose else over otherwise...
I disagree that or is ambiguous. In English we use or to mean xor, that is one item or the other item but not both. If we want to clarify that choosing both items is an option we use the term and/or.
There are examples of inclusive “or” in natural language. When the waiter asks: “Would you like cream or sugar?”, it’s not meant to imply that you should pick only one; it’s fine to answer “both” (example from: https://divisbyzero.com/2009/09/27/is-or-an-inclusive-or-or-... ).
This is a large part of why I dislike prescribed Oxford comma, because it undermines this legitimate use of a comma to alter the semantics.
See also “elsewise”, equivalent to “otherwise”; use in this construct “if a, b; elsewise, c” is a good deal rarer.
I would commonly speak sentences like “I was not hungry; else would I have eaten it” among family and friends, but not typically among the general public. It definitely feels a tad archaic, or at least highfalutin.
I would not be surprised to learn that "else" is more common now thanks to programming languages.
> Christopher Strachey's CPL programming language is the grandparent of C and therefore the ancestor of most current programming languages, and he refused to use "else," calling it "ignorantly incorrect English."
Given how hard it seemed everyone who designed languages tried to avoid using the word, it would seem Strachey's view was not uncommon.
Methinks it's rather ordinary.
"A bit archaic" would be like writing "threescore years ago" -- not a normal or especially accessible way of writing, but still recognized as valid grammar.