I don't know about those other languages, but Rust needs static type information to solve it (which Python doesn't have). Take this code: static NOT_FOUND: i

I don't know about those other languages, but Rust needs static type information to solve it (which Python doesn't have). Take this code: static NOT_FOUND: i32 = 404; match 403 { NOT_FOUND => println!("Not found"), _ => println!("Other"), } It doesn't compile: error[E0530]: match bindings cannot shadow statics It does compile if you change static to const (and then it does what you want). But if you misspell NOT_FOUND so it doesn't shadow a static then it misbehaves in the same way as the Python version, with only a few warnings to show for it. Python has the limitation that there's no fundamental difference between ordinary variables and constants. I don't know of an alternative proposal for Python that isn't burdensome or also dangerously surprising.