Re: Real-life examples of lexical binding in Emacs Lisp

[Jim Diamond]

On 2015-06-14 at 08:31 ADT, Pascal J. Bourguignon <pjb@informatimago.com> wrote:
> Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> writes:
>
>> Exactly.  What I'm curious is how lexical scoping might make some tasks
>> *connected to editing* easier/more natural.

<snip>

> Writing programs is easier and more natural with lexical scoping, IN
> GENERAL!

<snip>

Really?  Are there well-agreed-upon studies showing those things?
Or are they your opinion?

It strikes me that lexical scoping is easier to implement for compiled
languages (that is an "off the cuff" comment from someone (me) with
basic knowledge of compiler construction).  But if lexical scoping is
"more natural", is that because more people were "brought up" with
lexically-scoped languages than dynamically-scoped languages?

The first language I "learned" was lexically scoped.  But the first
language I used a lot was dynamically scoped.  It seemed quite
reasonable and natural to me at the time.

A few versions of emacs ago something I was using went from dynamic
scoping to lexical scoping.  Working around that change was not
trivial, casting suspicion on the universality of "easier".

Cheers.
                                Jim