How would this make any sense, though? In the case of "range" I can see the confusion, but when you explicitly declare a variable and increment it for each iteration of the loop, the only way it can work is if there's one instance of the variable.

I don't think so. As programmers, we have to think logically, and in this situation there really is no other logical way of thinking about how that code might work.

Only C and its direct descendants.

There are saner alternatives, more human friendly, to systems programming.

Python's behavior is the same as Go's. For example, this code:

    l = []
    for i in xrange(3):
      l.append(lambda: i)
    print [f() for f in l]

prints [2, 2, 2].

Same in javascript:

    var fns=[];
    for (var i=0; i<3; i++) {
       fns.push(function(){return i});
    };
    fns.map(function(x) { return x.call(); });

Returns

    [ 3, 3, 3 ]