alt Hacker NewsA comment have no semantic value to the code. Having code that check for stuff is different from writing comments as they are executed by the machine. Not read by other humans.
A comment have no semantic value to the code. Having code that check for stuff is different from writing comments as they are executed by the machine. Not read by other humans.
Of course you should put down a real assertion when you have a condition that can be cheaply checked (or even an assert(false) when the language syntax dictates an unreachable path). I'm not trying to argue against that, and I don't think anyone else here is either.
I was mainly responding to TFA, which states "How many times did you leave a comment on some branch of code stating 'this CANNOT happen' and thrown an exception" (emphasis mine), i.e., an assertion error alongside the comment. The author argues that you should use error values rather than exceptions. But for such sanity checks, there's typically no useful way to handle such an error value.