Closures, scope, and the classic loop bug_

A closure is a function bundled with its lexical environment — the variables that were in scope when it was defined. Every JavaScript function is a closure. The loop bug is just a surprising consequence of var's scoping combined with closures capturing references, not values.

Replace var with let and it works as expected. let is block-scoped, so each loop iteration creates a new binding. This is the main reason var is considered legacy — its scoping rules cause bugs that let and const make impossible.

Before ES6 and let, the fix was an IIFE: (function(i) { setTimeout(() => console.log(i), 100); })(i). This creates a new scope for each iteration, capturing the current value. You will see this pattern in older codebases — now you know why.

The classic: for (var i = 0; i < 5; i++) { setTimeout(() => console.log(i), 100); } logs 5 five times, not 0 1 2 3 4. Because var is function-scoped, all five callbacks share the same i variable, which is 5 by the time any of them run.