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Re:Context: The Missing Feature of Programming Languages by duped on Tuesday March 26, 2024 @12:10AM (#39824209)
I disagree it's clearer, because it's a spooky action at a distance. An analog are thread locals, which have the same characteristics of a dynamically scoped variable.

I've found dynamic scoping useful so few times I can count them on one hand, and while it's an intriguing feature, I think it makes a lot of sense to use a more explicit abstraction. For example, you shouldn't need dynamic scoping for overloading binary operators - you should have a more clear method that takes a context as an argument instead.

Context is external state, and it's extremely surprising when a fundamental operator like "+" modifies it.

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