The worst anti-pattern here is the catch- and finally-blocks living in a different scope.

Really, who thought it was a good idea that finalization and error handling blocks must have no access to their subject scope? Every damn language copies that nonsense, except for js and its `var` hoisting.

That's subjective, Idk about "MUCH more difficult".

All it does is moving the declaration to the correct visual scope, instead of a dangling up-front declaration.

Admittedly, I understand most coders are aready trained to read the latter.