Yes, well "The Patcher" was the original pre-release name of Max (before it was Max/MSP it was Max), and at various points there have been other incarnations of it, including JMax, and (still current), PureData by the original author. This is definitely a hats off to that. There's a great a paper by Miller Puckette, the author, on the history. http://msp.ucsd.edu/Publications/dartmouth-reprint.dir/