"I'll also note that I have not actually programmed in Kernel, so all my talk about "mental overhead" is actually referring to Arc, which is a distinctly unhygienic language."
That is really interesting, that our respective experiences are so different.
I'm with you on "lexical by default" -- I'm not totally crazy :) But the simplest possible mechanism that provides the similar advantages of namespaces is to just warn when a variable conflict is detected, when a global is defined for a second time.
I'm trying hard to introspect here, and I think the difference between lexical scope and namespaces for me is that when I'm programming by myself I don't need a second namespace, but I do still find dynamic scope to be error-prone. My entire belief system stems from that, that one should program as if one was working alone. Everything that helps that is good, anything that isn't needed is chaff.
