You seem to be conflating the idea of closures and functional programming. Functional programming is more about avoiding state and side-effects, which is antith

You seem to be conflating the idea of closures and functional programming. Functional programming is more about avoiding state and side-effects, which is antithetical to most Python and JavaScript code. A lot of languages, including C, support the kind of programming you're describing, but that's not "functional" per se. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_programming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_programming