The style dates back to Pascal. I think it's better, personally, and that might be because Pascal was my first programming language, but I don't care, I'm just happy it's back in fashion.
As a side note, I was quite sure that it dated back to Algol 60, but looked it up for this comment, and nope! Type came before variable.
I know it's an extremely superficial observation, but it just doesn't feel good to me.