Indeed -- this new feature makes it easier to affect the local scope in all sorts of new places. It was decided that the additional complexity is worth it to make the language more expressive, and it was also decided not to try to "lock down" this new feature to only "appropriate" places.

 

Hmm --- not sure if it's PEP-worthy, but I'd sure love to see the community make a strong stance that:

asserts are for tests, and only for tests

Which doesn't necessarily mean that assert statements only exist in test code (though I personally follow that practice), but it does mean that assert statements, wherever they live, should not be counted on at run time, ever.

-CHB