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https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MAHOUT-189?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=12770520#action_12770520
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Ted Dunning commented on MAHOUT-189:
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+1
Since asserts are almost always disabled, I view them mostly as fancy comments.
> Standardize use of assert keyword
> ---------------------------------
>
> Key: MAHOUT-189
> URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MAHOUT-189
> Project: Mahout
> Issue Type: Improvement
> Affects Versions: 0.2
> Reporter: Sean Owen
> Assignee: Sean Owen
> Priority: Minor
> Fix For: 0.3
>
>
> This is another one of my concept issues, and I'm posting this for
> discussion. It can be shot down or modified.
> I believe the assert keyword is for declaring conditions that can't be false
> in a bug-free program. They are checks that are enabled during development --
> to find out when the program isn't bug-free! -- but disabled in production,
> for performance. Since, of course, they'll always be true right?
> So, in particular, they are never for checking arguments to a non-private
> method. I see a number of cases where asserts are used for argument checking.
> This is bad, since these checks will be disabled in production!
> If this is a reasonable position, then I volunteer to review all uses of
> assert and change many to some kind of if-statement plus
> IllegalArgumentException.
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