I don't think the OP is particularly lucky. I never see errors like that, either. Just because the language doesn't enforce strong types doesn't mean variables don't conceptually have a type.
It seems like a symptom of other problems more than anything, and using a staticly typed language will just make those problems manifest in a different way.
Wow, then you are extremely lucky because bugs like that would occasionally consume a whole day of senior developer time at my previous Python job.