I realize the above is analogy, but can someone more informed than me confirm the correctness of the above description, because I find it to be a particular good one.
I can think of some analogous ways to recover some semblance of the analogy, but it's not really a great one.
A virtual "particle" is really more of a "disturbance" in a field: think splashing in a pool vs a wave. And in the context of the contents of a proton, imagine trying to differentiate a well-behaved 1hz wave from the other noise in the liquid, when the liquid is in a blender.
edit to add:
To recover the local/global variable analogy, imagine the compiler was continuously recompling the code based, inlining (or undoing that inlining), hoisting variables out of loops (or inserting them back), and trying to determine where a particular temporary value for calculation is being stored. Again, it's not a _great_ analogy; because I have a hard time determining how understanding the analogy would lead you to correct conclusions about virtual particles, but yeah.
