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by lupusreal 854 days ago
> Another related bit of dogma is _static scoping_. Why does a function have to explicitly state all its arguments? Why aren't we allowed to access variables from anywhere higher up in a call stack?

E.g. dynamic vs lexical scoping. Dynamic scoping used to be more popular and you can still use it in some languages like elisp. In some situations it's a natural fit for the problem, but I think in most cases lexical scoping is simply easier to use.
1 comments
valty 854 days ago
Yeh, static = lexical.

> easier to use

With plain text editors for sure. You really need a mandatory re-imagined IDE to make it work.

You need to be able to see exactly where the variable is coming from...which I think would be a good feature anyway.

And for this you really need a live programming environment...which I think would be good too...but they are very rare. Everyone is obsessed with static typing these days, but runtime value tracing is more useful imho.

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