That's a general argument against any added feature. The question is, is it useful enough? This particular feature seems valuable and cheap: I write code all the time that would be cleaner with it, and the meaning is natural enough that I independently invented essentially the same syntax years ago as a pair of Lisp macros (dealing in a-lists instead of hashtables).

> As it stands, it's a barrier to learning and a detriment to consistency in style.

Not true. It's actually super-easy to learn and meshes well with existing variable declaration styles.

I'm not sure why you spent two lines of text to say "I disagree."