I don't see much difference here. It's probably not a big deal when the type annotation is short but if it's something longer reading the short variable name fi

I don't see much difference here. It's probably not a big deal when the type annotation is short but if it's something longer reading the short variable name first helps give some context first. When scanning code I think I read the variable name first as well. Type inference should be able to deal with the simple cases anyway.