C, up through, C89, required variable declarations at the beginning of a block. C++ allowed them to be declared anywhere. This was popular enough that it was

C, up through, C89, required variable declarations at the beginning of a block. C++ allowed them to be declared anywhere. This was popular enough that it was added to C99 (along with // comments). There are some cases (references and objects without default constructors) where declaring at the start of a block might not be practical. Best practice? Shrug. Declaring variables anywhere was a conscious decision.