Comment Re:Test of Time (Score 3, Informative) 181
Yes, the GP post is confusing variable declaration and strong type safety. Experience has shown that we want both.
E.g. "variable x is a string", so if by accident the one time I used it, I happen to write "x=3" I want the compiler to complain and not silently infer the type "x is an integer".
Second, we want variable declarations so that if you accidentally write "usrename" instead of "username" the compiler complains.
Swift doesn't require you to give the type during declaration, which is a minor saving at a cost of many headaches. This is the wrong design decision, though I don't think is particularly critical.
Variables do need to be declared, which is a nice improvement over python and one of a few big things holding python back from total dominance (the others are white space, interpreted not compiled and somewhat weak pointer/data structure support).