Which languages, require the programmer to EXPLICITLY manage "environments"?
MOTIVATION : I recently noticed that "environment objects / envObs" (bags of variables in scope, if you will) and the stack of envObs, are hidden from programmers in most languages, and handled IMPLICITLY.
1. For example, in JavaScript, you can say (var global.x) however it is not mandatory, and there is sugar such you can say instead (var x). This seems to be true in C, shell command language, Lisp, and friends.
2. Languages which have a construct similar to, (let a=va, b=vb, startscope dosoemthing endscope), such as Lisp, do let you explicitly pass around envObs, but this isn't mandatory for the top-level global scope to begin with.
3. In many cases, the famous "stack overflow" problem is just a pile-up of too many envObjs, because "the stack" is made of envObs.
4. Exception handling (e.g. C's setjump, JS's try{}catch{}) use constructs such as envObjs to reset control flow after an exception is caught.
5. Generally, I was surprised to find that this pattern of hiding the global envObs and handling the envObjs IMPLICITLY is so pervasive. It seems that this obfuscates the nature of programming computers from programmers, leading to all sorts of confusions about scope for new learners. Moreover it seems that exposing explicit envObs management would allow/force programmers to write code that could be optimised more easily by compilers. So I am thinking to experiment with this in future exercises.