for(var i=0; i \< numLoops; i++){
    globalThis['example'+i] = doStuff(i);
}

What are talking about? $$ is the way to go :D

Piiiitchforks! Getcher pitchforks heeeere!

Every time we see this in our legacy code we yell out: dolla-dolla bills 'yall!

So long as the ID never repeats, it’s cool

That’s because it makes sense when dynamically creating HTML. HTML is not a programming language, it’s simply markup - so if you want to generate some block of HTML in a loop and later access that block of HTML in JS (e.g. to interact with the UI separate from creating it in the first place), it’s a completely reasonable thing to do.

I started coding with Visual Basic 3 which basically only had arrays for holding multiple items, so probably 50% of my time was spent writing code to delete items - you had to iterate through the remainder of the array copying values from x to x - 1 and then re-dimensioning the array. I remember having my mind blown when proper collections were introduced with VB4.

Or just use a dictionary/hashmap if it’s all in the same program

So is that a no?

Is anyone really?

Everything goes with macros :D

I distinctly remember having the same experience. For some reason I believed dynamic variable naming was a good idea. What was I on??

In lower level languages like C/C++ the reason becomes much more apparent when you learn about memory allocation and management (as a bonus it also really helps to understand how OS’s handle memory). Dynamically declaring variables in a loop would mean you need to allocate a chunk of memory for each variable that’s generated on the fly, most of, if not all of the dynamically declared variables would not even use most of their allocated memory resulting in a ton of extra overhead and wasted space within memory. An array is usually the answer when someone asks how to dynamically define variables. With an array you allocate the space needed in memory and can iterate across it block by block resulting in more control and efficiency within your reserved memory block. Linked lists are also a fun thing to look into when you aren’t sure how big your array needs to be. It’s a hard question to answer in a 100 level class because the answer actually goes pretty deep into low level programming, operating system and hardware principles.

I remember wondering this when I was first trying to self learn. It’s because I needed a map (or list + struct or something) and was such a noob I didn’t know what maps were. Whatever material I was learning from wasn’t good enough, especially for winging things. Plus I was trying to learn C++ and maps aren’t quite so built into the language as they are with a better first language like Python.

A common problem (before learning it is impossible/fraught with danger) is categorisation, like sorting of strings.

Say you have a text, and need to count words of different lengths.

One intuitive approach is to pass through it once and add each word to a list for the corresponding length, as well as making lists as needed. No 7 letter words, no 7-letter-word-list, even though there are longer words.

As humans we’re good at sorting things into an unknown number of categories, and we have to unlearn that for programming