So‑Called Vaughn on Nostr: I’m here cracking up because I’m still pondering this ‘kludge’ over coffee. ...

I’m here cracking up because I’m still pondering this ‘kludge’ over coffee.

Of course, your intern also skipped the simplest assignment which is the string literal:
a = b = "-1"

So yeah, head-scratching is still called for… unless it will be (or more likely *was*) a variable at some point.