I'm just beginning to learn about Javascript, and I'm not sure if I like the fact that variables, declared outside of functions, become global. How do other people feel about it?

You either learn to live with it or hate js ;).

Just make sure you use var to declare your variables and they at least keep inside the function scope, that is the only scope js have before es6 standard.

But pretty soon you might have the new es6 on all relevant browsers snd you could then use let which is scoped at the block level, that is inside {}

If you use typescript and recompile that you can do it today.

put everything in a closure and you are good to go

(It's not so bad)();

You can do what you want. Use Angular or React, you get classes.

@billgates no you don't get classes because you use a framework. You get classes when you use buildscripts, like the ones used for angular or react.
Or you just use a modern browser and you have your classes without Angular and React.

Never the less, it has nothing to do with global variables. If you declare a variable outside of a class/function it will be global.

But on that note, there would be the possibility that you use the module-system of js, where nothing would be global anymore.

In conclusion: js is quite big and confusing in the beginning.

@plusgut yes I guess new ES6 or whatever added classes to the language. My experience is only with those 2 frameworks (and JS of the 90s), and I guess that's like what you said. Frameworks enforce modules and closure as back then JS didn't have that easily (I remember something about prototypes)