[mattmanser]

The var syntax definitely doesn't lead to hard to read code. It's one of those assumptions people who haven't actually used it make.

99% of the time it's completely obvious what the variable is because you can just look at the right side of the equal sign.

Also, you can just hover over it.

As for the extension methods, they pretty much fixed that in VS 2015, it will now tell you which using statement you need to include.

Extension methods are a good solution to a specific problem.