Lesson 12 on variable scoping

[uwidev]

Initially, when describing the scope of accessible variables, this lesson first explains script-wide variables. Afterwards, it explains about variables defined within variables, and how only they can only be accessed within that function. My immediate thought after that was "why limit the capabilities of accessing variables?"

In other words, I think some people might question why one would put accessibility constraints on themselves for variables. Maybe someone might shrug off the idea of constraining variable scoping and define all their variables script-wide to be more free, when in reality it could lead to spaghetti code. I think a short explanation of why constraining scope could be useful.

Off the top of my head, I can think of a few reasons why you would want to limit the scope of variables to functions:

• security (e.g. an animal should never be able to access a variable a separate animal)
• organization (e.g. an animal should only contain and be able to access its own variables)
• shadowing (e.g. defined foo in script-wide, but defined fooagain in a function)
  • should be avoided to avoid confusion

I'm only on Lesson 12, so maybe it is elaborated later on.