I am looking for a clear explanation of JavaScript closures for someone who understands basic programming concepts like functions and variables but is unfamiliar with closures.
I’ve encountered examples online, such as those related to the Scheme programming language, but I still find myself confused about the subject. Can someone simplify this for me?
Think of a closure as a function bundled with its environment – the variables it needs. It’s like a backpack that carries everything the function needs to execute, even if the function’s called somewhere else. It helps keep functions and their variables private, pretty cool for managing code scope!
Closures occur when a function is able to remember and access its lexical scope even when the function is executing outside its original scope. This happens because in JavaScript, functions are first-class citizens and can be passed around just like variables. A common usage of closures is in creating private data because you can have a function returning another function that interacts with the data, thus giving it access without exposing the data or allowing it to be freely modifiable. This feature is essential for encapsulation and functional programming practices in JavaScript.
hey! in a simple way, closures r just a way a function can “see” variables outside of their own scope, like, keeping a memory of its surrounding area. It’s useful for stuff like creating private state values, n’ often used to make clean & organized code! 
In JavaScript, closures provide a powerful feature of maintaining access to a function’s lexical scope, even outside this scope. Consider an internal function that resides within an outer function; it can still access the outer function’s variables. Closures effectively “capture” these variables, thus preserving their state between calls. This can be particularly useful for building more complex applications where you need to manage the state without exposing all the details to the outside world, enhancing your code’s modularity and preventing variable conflicts.