Understanding Closure in JavaScript: A Practical Guide for Beginners

Max N
3 min readMar 20, 2024

What is Closure in JavaScript?

When diving into the world of JavaScript, one concept that often confuses beginners is closure. So, what exactly is closure? In simple terms, closure is a powerful and fundamental concept in JavaScript that allows functions to retain access to variables from their parent scope even after the parent function has finished executing. This means that a function can “remember” and access its lexical scope even when it is executed outside of that scope.

Why is Closure Important?

Understanding closure is crucial for writing clean, efficient, and maintainable code in JavaScript. It enables developers to create more flexible and modular code by encapsulating variables within functions, preventing them from polluting the global scope. This not only helps in avoiding naming conflicts but also promotes better code organization and reusability.

Example of Closure in Action

Let’s dive into a simple example to illustrate how closure works in JavaScript:

function outerFunction() {
let outerVariable = 'I am from the outer function';

function innerFunction() {
console.log(outerVariable);
}

return innerFunction;
}

const…

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Max N
Max N

Written by Max N

A writer that writes about JavaScript and Python to beginners. If you find my articles helpful, feel free to follow.