The issue is not because of the language used. You can have bugs - potentially fatal as this case underlines - in any language.

When I studied the Therac case, there was also a study in the "Killer Robot" - see here : http://www.onlineethics.org/cms/5122.aspx. Well worth a read to understand how software can become dangerous.

Sadly nowadays, a search for Killer Robot turns up all sorts of stories of drones being used to kill people. When I first looked up killer robot a number of years ago, the results were pretty much all about the ethics scenario and not real life people being killed. How society has moved on...