I think you missed the point. Ruby and Python syntax conjoins two concepts: variable declaration and variable binding. This increases the likelihood of subtle n

I think you missed the point. Ruby and Python syntax conjoins two concepts: variable declaration and variable binding. This increases the likelihood of subtle naming errors, e.g.: my_variable = 10 # a few lines later... my_varable = 15 Some kind of "var" keyword makes the problem disappear and makes the programmer's intentions clearer, e.g., when creating temporary variables inside the scope of a conditional or a loop. In the case of Perl, strict mode also makes it clearer when the programmer wants a lexically ("my") or dynamically ("local") scoped variable, a feature woefully missing in both Ruby and Python.