The small cost of not being able to declare your variables together with your pointers is nothing compared to the confusion it avoids.

    int* var1;

is the way I (and I suspect anyone who's studied theoretical algebraic data types) think about my variables and types. It sucks that C forces me to mentally translate it to a much less satisfying form.

I'm not sure what being ridiculously easy to make errors in has to do with dictating how to write your programs.