I, too, go back up the code to find the type of a variable. But I see the opposite problem: if the type is first, then it becomes harder to find the line that declares the variable I'm interested in, because the variable name isn't first. It's after the type, and the type could be "int" or it could be "struct Frobnosticator". That is, the variable name is after a variable-length type, so I have to keep bouncing left to right to find the start of the variable name.