This is not a modern syntax, it predates C, and this whole debate goes a-a-all the way back to ALGOL and PL/I, which were late 60-es. And it doesn't really matt

This is not a modern syntax, it predates C, and this whole debate goes a-a-all the way back to ALGOL and PL/I, which were late 60-es. And it doesn't really matter if the type is before (ALGOL) or after (PL/I, Pascal) the variable name; what matters is if it is actually before/after (ALGOL, PL/I, Pascal) the variable name, or around of it (C): compare "X ^ARRAY[10] OF ^INT" with "int (x)[10]".