I read an article recently that described an attempted back door in the Linux kernel and it got me thinking about language safety.

First I tested beloved Rust:

cargo run

error[E0308]: mismatched types
 --> src/main.rs:3:8
  |
3 |     if ligma = 4 {
  |        ^^^^^^^^^ expected `bool`, found `()`
  |
help: you might have meant to compare for equality
  |
3 |     if ligma == 4 {
  |               +

For more information about this error, try `rustc --explain E0308`.
error: could not compile `linux_03_backdoor_test` (bin "linux_03_backdoor_test") due to 1 previous error

of course it threw a fit.

Next up is Python:

python test.py

  File ".../test.py", line 3
    if ligma = 4:
       ^^^^^^^^^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax. Maybe you meant '==' or ':=' instead of '='?

Python caught it.

Next, JavaScript: node test.js

4

This is why I hate JS.

Yes I am aware of linters but that's not the point. Make it impossible by design.