I think the "don't pay for what you don't use"-principle is great. Even if it means your variables aren't guaranteed to be initialized. Or in other words: if you don't need an initial value, you won't be forced to assign one. I agree there are few cases where it will actually make a difference, and that there are cases where you can forget initializing. If there is any importance to initialization, though, it deserves a place in the code. And having to call upon an obscure directive to disable initialization, or even not being able to do it, just seems like a misfeature to me.