Instead of “int x”
You have “var x int”
Which obscures the type, making it harder to read the code. The only justification is that 16 years ago, some guy thought he was being clever. For 99.99% of code, it’s a worse syntax. Nobody does eight levels of pointer redirection in typical everyday code.
And in the process makes it significantly harder for human eyes to find the boundary between identifier and type.
var
foo: char;
Sure, it's initially kind of annoying if you're used to the C style of type before identifier, but it's something you can quickly get to grips with. And as time has gone on, it seems like a style that a lot of modern languages have adopted. Off the top of my head, I think this style is in TypeScript, Python type hints, Go, Rust, Nim, Zig, and Odin. I asked Claude for a few more examples and apparently it's also used by Kotlin, Swift, and various flavors of ML and Haskell.
But hey, if you're still a fan of type before variable, PHP has your back.
class User {
public int $id;
public ?string $name;
public function __construct(int $id, ?string $name) {
$this->id = $id;
$this->name = $name;
}
}I don’t know if this is the reason but Robert Griesemer, one of the three original guys, comes from a Pascal/Modula background.
You can write
var x = 5
how would that work if the type had to be first? Languages that added inference later tend to have “auto” as the type which looks terrible.