C#'s using is also not calling the "destructor", it's calling .Dispose()

C# and Python have actual destructors "nobody" uses because they are GCed languages which make this discussion confusing (well, in Python they do sometimes, because it is reference counted and more predictable, making the discussion even more confusing).

I'm treating __exit__() and .Dispose() as "destructors" here, in the sense that they are implicitly called methods that free the resource (like drop in Rust), vs defering a call to close, which is explicit and "configurable" (you have to call the right method).

You get to keep the variable around, but the resource itself is gone after the with/using block, you have to reacquire it. With some changes to the way the APIs were written, it would make a bit more sense (IMO):

    files = [File("a.txt"), File("b.txt"), File("c.txt")]
    for f in files:
        with f.open('r'):
            print(f.read())
    return files

I personally extremely dislike the fact that "as f" is not scoped.