Strict and explicit

Strict and explicit feels like a good way to write code. For me, it's quite natural to do that in Java and C#, but not in VB.Net so fortunately the drunken monkeys gave us the two, optional, options:
Option Strict On
Option Explicit On

Thanks guys. But couldn't you just have skipped inventing the darn language in the first place.

Update: Lovely things that show up when turning the above options on
If (Len(strRowFilter.Trim.Length > 0)) Then