I agree. Supporting both var and let sounds like a good way to maintain code compatibility and transition to something safer.

And since Firefox has already supported both var and let for several years now, and most Firefox chrome code uses let exclusively, this approach is pretty well proven in a large code base. As a Firefox developer, I now find it quite annoying to write for JS engines that support only var.

Exactly.

Most of the rant was idiotic, basically "leave js alone". Well keep programming without the new features if you want, its not like they will force you to use let and co.

And those tired "less is more" and "lets not add features lest we complicate the language" are inane...

What's wrong with function scope? Python has function scope and no one is complaining about it there.

In Python it rarely gets in the way, because you can't accidentally define something as global.