I don't think this has to do with `var` - AS3 has that and *needs* the type. This is only possible because of [Haxe type inference](http://haxe.org/ref/type_infer).

As far as I know there isn't much consistency regarding this across the codebase. But I personally find it much nicer not two write the same thing twice, the information is redundant in this case. It would be different here:

`var something = getSomething()`

This would work perectly fine as well, and `something` would be typed properly to the return type of `getSomething()`, but it's not immediately obvious what the type will be, thus making the code less readable.