[oelmekki]

Well, if they are global when they are undeclared, that pretty much means they are global by default. Maybe a better way of putting it would be "js variables are declared global by default, when unspecified and not using strict mode".

Anyway, I think parent's point was to say this behavior already has been seen in javascript. Actually, it may even be inherited from javascript. When I first looked at solidity last year, I was under the impression it was a modified version of javascript, like unity3d's one. Nowadays, solidity landing page reads "high-level language whose syntax is similar to that of JavaScript", so not sure if it still is (or has ever been, for the matter) derived from something like v8 or rhino.

The reason for that choice seems not far fetched : it's not uncommon, when wanting to add scripting to something, to go with javascript, since it's arguably the most known language, developers knowing "<their main language> and javascript", especially webdevs (a blockchain app project, lisk, even made html/css/js the defacto mean to build apps). Of course, fintech is an industry where the usual values from webdev (release early, release often) have disastrous results.