[masklinn]

Maybe look at languages created in the last 30 years or so?

Because e.g. in Rust what you're talking about is:

    #[derive(Deserialize)]
    struct Whatever {
        id: usize,
        first_name: String
    }

    // ...

    let thing: Whatever = get(some_url)?.json()?;

You encode your assumptions as a structure, then you do your call, ask for the conversion, get notified that that can fail (and you can get an error if you but ask), and then you get your value knowing your assumptions have been confirmed.

It's definitely less "throw at the wall" than just

    thing = get(some_url).json()

but it's a lot easier to manipulate, inspect, and debug when it invariably goes to shit because some of your assumptions were wrong (turns out `first_name` can be both missing and null, for different reasons).

For a 5 lines throwaway script the latter is fine, but if it's going to run more than a pair of time or need more than few dozen minutes (to write or run) I've always been happier with the former, the cycle of "edit, make a typo, breaks at runtime, fix that, an other typo, breaks again, run for an hour, blow up because of a typo in the reporting so you get jack shit so you get to run it again".