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Why would you have to specify it's an int when the compiler is perfectly able to discover that himself?

Is it an int? An int32? An int64? Is it unsigned? Maybe it's actually a float which just happens to be initialized to a valid integer value. In that case is it a float or a double?

Literals can map to multiple types, and there hasn't yet been discovered a satisfactory way--apart from guessing in cases of ambiguity--to support type inference for literals.

That depends on your definition of "satisfactory" - F# uses strong type inference on literals and there is no ambiguity. Of course this means that distinguishing between types requires metadata, for example 42uy is an unsigned byte, 42L is an int64, 42I is a bigint and 42N is a BigRational. I think this is satisfactory, although you might disagree.

Sorry, I meant "inference for overloaded literals."

To make sure the programmer realizes this as well.

(It's a reasonable opinion, albeit not mine.)

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