On Saturday, November 16, 2013, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
On Sat, Nov 16, 2013 at 11:16:48AM -0500, Donald Stufft wrote:
Personally I think that none of the -O* should be removing asserts. It feels like a foot gun to me. I’ve seen more than one codebase that would be completely broken under -O* because they used asserts without even knowing -O* existed.
I agree that many people misuse asserts. I agree that this is a problem for them. But I disagree that the solution is to remove what I consider to be a useful feature, and a common one in other languages, just to protect people from their broken code.
I prefer to see better efforts to educate them. To that end, I've taken the liberty of sending a post to python-list@python.org <javascript:;>describing when to use asserts, and when not to use them:
https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2013-November/660401.html
Nice post!
I will continue to use my best effort to encourage good use of assertions in Python.
Thank you! --Guido
-- --Guido van Rossum (on iPad)