I love assert

[Ian Kelly]

On Fri, Nov 14, 2014 at 4:37 AM, Steven D'Aprano
<steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> wrote:
> Ethan Furman wrote:
>
>>> There's no way to make the CONFUSED status be handled without actually
>>> changing the code. The difference is that this version will not
>>> incorrectly treat CONFUSED as WARNING; it just won't do anything at
>>> all if the code is optimized.
>>
>> So, a different wrong thing, but still a wrong thing.  ;)
>
> And potentially a *worse* wrong thing.

Potentially it's worse, but more likely doing the wrong thing will be
worse than doing nothing.

>    "I find it amusing when novice programmers believe their main
>     job is preventing programs from crashing. ... More experienced
>     programmers realize that correct code is great, code that
>     crashes could use improvement, but incorrect code that doesn’t
>     crash is a horrible nightmare."
>     -- Chris Smith
>
> Assertions can help by this, by causing wrong code to fail as soon as
> possible (provided, of course, that you don't defeat the assertions by
> running the code with assertions disabled).

I fail to see the relevance of this quote. The code I posted that
you're responding to does use an assertion. The case where it does "a
different wrong thing" is precisely the case where assertions are
disabled.