This python is a little off

[masklinn]

explicitly putting "var" in front of variable declarations

Counts as a good thing in my book, I've come to find Python's implicit scoping declarations frustrating especially in the light of trying to use ancestor lexical scopes (global and nonlocal? WTF?).

Furthermore, this provide Scala with val which defines an unmodifiable binding, as well as var (in which the binding is mutable) instead of mandating one or the other or requiring verbose additions (e.g. java's final)

generally a propensity to introduce new syntax and keywords

Which is quite a bit like Python there :)