Is There a Programming Language That Embraces Globals?
This seems to me (as to some commenters) to be simply dynamic
scoping. It was used often in Lisp to change the behavior of system
functions to get some extra features, or perform hidden actions such
as monitoring of programs.  The cost is indeed that large programs may
be difficult to manage and maintain. Since then, there was a long
battle between static and dynamic scoping, I would guess that static
scoping supporters provided techniques to do what was formerly done by
dynamic scoping. The book I would look for such techniques is Abelson and Sussman:
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.

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