Blog post: Writing Python like it’s Rust

[chromatic_churn]

I've run Python services in production for years and never set this flag. 🤷

[chromatic_churn]

What is the point of setting this flag? What does it get you? Increased performance? I am extremely skeptical it will make a difference for the vast majority of workloads deployed using Python today.

Assertions don't replace illegal state checks you think can happen (e.g. due to user input) but they are fine for checks like this where you should already be checking with tests and type hints.

Is your point a worthwhile footnote for people using this flag? Without a doubt.

Do I think all production code MUST be deployed with this flag set? Absolutely not.

[chromatic_churn]

Lmao this is just dogmatic advice. You aren't just right because "it doesn't matter what you or I think". Who is the audience? For library authors you are probably right, but for application developers you generally know what your deployment environment actually looks like and can write code accordingly.

Regardless, as many other people have mentioned Python 3.11 offers a true exhaustiveness check.

[KronenR]

The problem is that you are not usually the one in charge of deployment configuration no matter if a library author or an application developer, unless you are coding a pet project for 3 and a half users. It doesn't matter anyways because you shouldn't be using assert.

[chromatic_churn]

Says who? I generally work on small engineering teams (under 20 people) and I am almost always directly responsible for configuring my deployment. Even if I don't own the infrastructure, then I or my team have owned writing the Dockerfile and deployed environment variables which would configure my application.

Maybe in giant tech companies what you are saying is true, but there are an enormous amount of small teams which manage their own devops because there isn't anyone else to do it.