I love assert

[Ethan Furman]

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On 11/14/2014 11:12 AM, Marko Rauhamaa wrote:
> Ethan Furman wrote:
> 
>> My point being: a safety net that is so easily disabled does not count (IMHO) as a backup.
> 
> Correct. You never lean on assertions. They are primarily formal comments.

On this point we can agree.  :)


>> This is one my very few complaints about Python: running it normally is the same as running with DEBUG turned
>> on, so the unusual case is remembering to run with asserts turned /off/.
> 
> I don't remember ever having optimized them out in any programming language. Has that really improved the 
> performance of your code?

In the handful of languages I have worked with so far, it's the other way 'round:  you un-optimize debug mode in.
CPython itself is a good example: when configuring, you must add --with-pydebug in order to get all the extra checks
added (which is great when adding new features), but that option isn't used when making production CPythons; yet
Python the language is just the opposite: debug mode is on /by default/, and to turn it off you have to specify -O:

$ ./python -c "print(__debug__)"
True

$ ./python -O -c "print(__debug__)"
False

- --
~Ethan~
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