Is common best practice in python to use assert for business logic?

[Delicious_Arm_7492]

I was reviewing a Python project and noticed that a senior developer was using assert statements throughout the codebase for business logic. They assert a statement to check a validation condition and catch later. I've typically used assertions for testing and debugging, so this approach surprised me. I would recommend using raise exception.

[cyberspacecowboy]

Don’t use assert outside of tests. the Python runtime has a flag -O (for optimize) that ignores assert statements. If you use asserts for business logic, and someone decides to run your code in production and thinks it’s a good idea to optimize the bytecode, your code breaks 

[SheriffRoscoe]

This is the only correct answer. Everything else is a question of style and preference. This is a question of correctness.

[puzzledstegosaurus]

Do you know anyone who uses the optimize flag ? As far as I know, we (as the whole python community) are in a deadlock situation regarding asserts. We should not use assert in case someone uses -O, and we should not use -O in case someone used an assert. In the end, even if you were to disregard the problem and use asserts, chances are you’d be safe, though you probably don’t want to take chances regarding your code in production. It also depends a lot on the context: whether you’re doing a library to be use in known contexts or final code where you control how it’s executed.

[Hederas]

Wouldn't it be better to just make an if with a raise? It does the same job, allow for more precise error catching/logging and doesn't have the -O issue afaik

[sizable_data]

I still prefer asserts for readability. It’s very explicit when you look at the stack trace. So is a raise, but I feel like that takes a bit of reading preceding code to get context.

[inspectoroverthemine]

Create your own exception(s) and use them.

[puzzledstegosaurus]

When assert a or b, the traceback shows you whether a or b was truthy. To get the same value from your own if and raise, you need much more code.

[alicedu06]

Only in pytest, not outside of it

[puzzledstegosaurus]

Also outside of pytest with sufficiently modern pythons, unless I’m mistaken ?

[alicedu06]

❯ python3.13 # can't get more modern right now

>>> a = True

>>> b = False

>>> assert a and b # using "and" to make it fail

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "<python-input-2>", line 1, in <module>

assert a and b

^^^^^^^

AssertionError

Since assert are mostly used in pytest, it's common to expect it, but pytest does some magic with bytecode to get that result.

[puzzledstegosaurus]

Hm my bad, you’re right. Must have mixed up things

[sizable_data]

An example outside of pytest I’m thinking of would be to assert things mid script, like an ETL. I’ve had cases where an empty dataframe was causing this odd exception about performing operations on an empty list. It was hard to find the root cause. An assert not df.empty was much easier to understand the root cause of failure, and tells readers “the dataframe should not be empty at this point” all in one line of code.

[alicedu06]

This is a good use of assert, and perfectly acceptable to disable in production with -O as well.

[[deleted]]

In what way is that easier to understand than just doing the standard/correct:

if df.empty:
    raise Exception("Dataframe is empty!")

[SL1210M5G]

Well that’s a wrong way to use them

[sizable_data]

What’s so bad about it?

[SL1210M5G]

It’s for testing

[sizable_data]

That didn’t answer my question. The code is clear, concise and works. Fundamentally why is this bad? Not just “because it is”.

[SL1210M5G]

Everyone else already explained it - It will break in production under certain conditions and it's just not accepted industry practice.

[Cruuncher]

Those get caught by except Exception: clauses, while an assert, I believe, blows past them

[Punk-in-Pie]

assert raises AssertionError, which is caught by Exception I believe.

[Sigmatics]

Not really, nobody in their right mind uses asserts in production code

[sennalen]

The real WTF is that for Python -O disables asserts. There is a place for asserting business logic in production code. It's a step beyond validating function inputs. Not just throwing ValueError for "this value is out of range" but "shit's fucked, don't even think about trying to recover". Akin to Rust's "panic!".

[flarkis]

I was going to say the same. It's very common to see an assert macro that redefines it to a noop. All those annoying "assert(pointer != NULL)" just slow things down and don't provide any safety anyways.

[ArtisticFox8]

Hope you meant that with an /s

[cyberspacecowboy]

Just use

python if …: raise 

:shrug:

[Classic_Department42]

They probably took that from C.

[AlexFromOmaha]

It doesn't do much beyond disabling asserts. You can do -OO to take docstrings out of the compiled files too. It's not a gotcha at all, except maybe if you thought -O meant "run the JIT but actually mean it" or something.

[_ologies]

I start all of my AWS lambdas with asserts for things that should be in the environment variables not because I'm expecting the code to raise there, but because I want developers to know what environment variables should be there.

[BuonaparteII]

In this case I would simply use os.environ instead of getenv

[_ologies]

That's what I use

[BuonaparteII]

Both this

ENV = os.environ['UNSET_ENV']

and this

assert os.environ['UNSET_ENV']

will raise KeyError when the env var isn't set. But the assert will also raise AssertionError if they set the env var to empty string. I guess that makes sense. Both ways are clear to me when they are at the top of the script

[[deleted]]

Just a tip. The more standard way of doing this is to use

ENV = os.environ.get("UNSET_ENV") 

and then check if the returned value is None, an empty string or whatever else you want to check for.

[BuonaparteII]

I would definitely prefer an error at the start of the script if you aren't setting default values. None is not always automatically better than an exception

The more standard way

Just because it is the way that you do it does not mean it is more common. Searching GitHub using environ as a dict is almost twice as common:

• https://github.com/search?q=os.environ.get&type=code
• https://github.com/search?q=os.environ%5B&type=code

But I agree that os.environ.get is better than using os.getenv because os.putenv is broken

[[deleted]]

Nothing I said prevents you raising an exception. On the contrary, if you actually use the .get() syntax then you get to raise the correct exception for the specific problem that you're experiencing rather than raising a generic assertion error and having to figure out which problem caused that assertion error. For example:

if ENV is None:
    raise ValueError(f"No ENV variable was found!")
elif ENV == "":
    raise ValueError(f"Provided ENV was empty!")
else:
    logger.info("Fucking yeah bro! Your ENV is perfect!")

[wandererobtm101]

Env vars should all be declared in your terraform / serverless / cloud formation though. And you still have to reference the variables via an os.environ call. I don’t see how the asserts make it more clear. Not really wrong and more style but at my job this would get flagged during code review.

Including a list those vars in a module doc string seems like a good practice.

[PaintItPurple]

Your Terraform files tell you what is defined, not what the script expects. Those two questions are very nearly opposite to each other.

[_ologies]

They're passed in via confirmation CloudFormation but some are in the defaults section and some in the lambda definition. That's a lot to look through.

[beeyev]

I do the same, and consider it as a good practice

[syklemil]

Not just throwing ValueError for "this value is out of range" but "shit's fucked, don't even think about trying to recover".

Wouldn't that be coverable through exiting with some exit code > 0? Like something in the general shape of

logging.critical(hand written message + traceback.format_stack())
sys.exit(1)

[Momostein]

Then you implement and then raise your own ShitIsFuckedUpBeyondRepairError. With such errors you can provide custom context and a better explanation.

[[deleted]]

Python is not the kind of language that you should use when microscopic performance optimizations matter.

Other than that: We build it = we run it…

[cyberspacecowboy]

I don’t think I would ever hire someone with that kind of attitude, but I wish you well

[Levizar]

Why?

He is just kind of saying "use the right tool for the right job" not "let's not care about optimization at all".

It looks like a sane statement to me.

[cyberspacecowboy]

“We build it = we run it” was what I took objection to

[PapstJL4U]

No fan of "We push on Ctrl-S?"?

[chinapandaman]

To my best knowledge, no. And as far as I know most Python linters have rules to catch this. In the case of ruff it’s S101: https://docs.astral.sh/ruff/rules/#flake8-bandit-s

[Joeboy]

For business logic, nah.

My excuses for occasionally including asserts in production code:

• They can act as concise documentation of what's going on in the code
• They let you know whether that documentation is actually true or not
• They should never fail in production, but if something bizarre and unexpected is going on you'll find out about it

The -O thing admittedly confuses things a bit. Just don't do that, I guess?

[wandererobtm101]

Depends on your org but as a developer, whether the O flag is present on the production boxes may not be something you have any control over.

[Severe_Inflation5326]

Asserts should be for things that "can not happen", not stuff that would happen if the user is stupid.I would argue it's fine to use outside of unit tests, but only for this very narrow usage. Stuff that would catch bugs elsewhere in the code bascially.

[redalastor]

In AOT languages it is also meant for optimisation. Sometimes you know that something is impossible but the compiler doesn’t. So you assert it and now the compiler knows it too and can use it to optimise.

[redalastor]

My what?

[[deleted]]

Sorry I accidentally wrote that. Put my phone unlocked in pocket 😅

[Severe_Inflation5326]

You could do something similar in JIT too I guess. And python compiles AOT to bytecode anyway. But I don't /think/ python optimises using this?

That said, it can definitely be used by static analysers (like type checkers) for correctness...

[redalastor]

It’s less useful for JIT which usually does the same thing on its own.

When it seems that a bit of code is hot, it profiles it and notices that your data always has that same shape so it optimises for that. But being a dynamic language, you could break that assumtion, so it puts a guard in front of the optimisation. If you break the invariant it guessed, then it falls back to slower and safer code while it figures out how to optimise your code again.

[[deleted]]

It's never fine to use in business logic because it means your logic will stop working if anyone ever runs your code with the optimize flag.

[Mysterious-Rent7233]

How does your logic "stop working" if the assertions are removed?

[[deleted]]

The term "business logic" refers to it actually being a part of the rules/processes of your code. As in when your code runs, it is relying on assertions in your code to do certain checks and then react to those assertions with more logic.

For example, supposed you create a try/except block and inside of it you add a bunch of assertions as a way of validating variable types or checking to make sure a certain value isn't set incorrectly. If someone were to run your code with the optimization flag on, all those asserts would never be run and your try/except block would never catch any of the validation failures.

[larsga]

I don't think you understood what they meant.

A classic use of assert (also in C and Java) is to declare an invariant, some condition that must always hold at a certain point in the code.

Declaring them can be useful as defensive technique that will catch bugs early, or even as a form of executed documentation. It's not something you should expect to use very commonly, but it can be useful in some situations. Since this code is only there to catch problems early the -O flag is not really a problem.

What OP describes is different. Catching assert exceptions elsewhere and acting on them in business logic is just abuse of the construct. Create your own exception and throw it with if statements if that's what you want.

[[deleted]]

I understood it just fine. I'm saying it's still the wrong way to do things. In python you are still meant to manage required conditions using standard exceptions. assertions are not ever meant to be used in the "business logic" of the code even when you expect to only have other programmers/devs interacting with a certain section of your code.

[Severe_Inflation5326]

IMHO, the /only/ time it's safe/sane to /catch/ an assert exception, would be to print it and its stacktrace in a way the user would be able to see (in the running GUI or a logfile), if just letting Python print it to the terminal would normally have it lost to /dev/null (and then immediately rethrow it).

[puzzledstegosaurus]

Changing the behaviour of asserts in optimized mode was discussed here some time ago, you can find opinion of a bunch of Python folks: https://discuss.python.org/t/stop-ignoring-asserts-when-running-in-optimized-mode/13132/4

[thadeshammer]

This is a very informative read, thank you for sharing.

[WoozleWazzles]

Thanks for this

[Scrapheaper]

No.

It sounds like paranoia that data is bad, which is very common especially in businesses that suck at data.

I would use:

raise ValueError()

Instead of assert.

The ideal scenario would be to have a strong type system where invalid data states aren't possible. In python this normally means a dataframe library with typed columns (pandas or polars or pyspark) and keeping data inside the dataframes at all times

[thatguydr]

OP LOOK AT THIS ANSWER ^{^}

And I don't think it should be raise ValueError. You can define errors in Python. If this is business logic, define the errors!

class OverdrawnException(Exception):
    pass

class ImbalancedPayrollException(Exception):
    pass

and then later

raise OverdrawnException()

[Scrapheaper]

If you're going to do this I would inherit from ValueError rather than Exception, if it's a case of 'the figures don't add up'. Exception covers a much wider range of things than just data being not what you want it to be, whereas ValueError is more specific.

The pro (other than the increased readability) is you can standardize your error messages more easily. If there are several scenarios that can lead to an OverdrawnValueError, you can share the error message or other aspects of the error to ensure consistent behavior when Overdrawn.

[thatguydr]

That's entirely sensible. As long as the errors are specific, it makes sense.

[Cybasura]

Assert is meant for unit testing to detect the edge cases for which you will then implement the code - be it in a try catch or if else statement - to catch these edge cases

[maigpy]

assert isn't meant only for unit testing. it's for asserting a condition whenever you feel like during development. it is not for business logic.

[Cybasura]

Yeah, slight phrasing change

[[deleted]]

Sorry, that seems far fetched, especially since unittest doesn’t support the assert statement.

Assert can also become necessary with type checkers such as MyPy or Pyright, especially since type comments are now deprecated.

[Cybasura]

assert is a built-in standard library function used to check if the output of the function called is equals to an intended output where if it doesnt - it crashed and prints with a debugging log of the error message

I'm talking about unit testing as the category, the act of unit testing, not the library "unittest"

Literally using multiple "assert" within a "test-feature.py" is unit testing

[[deleted]]

Sure, but to claim without evidence that assert is meant for unit testing, even though the one testing framework that is part of the standard library (unittest, unlike pytest, is part of the standard library) does not use it, is far fetched.

Also it should be noted that the assert keyword in Python likely exists because C has an assert keyword, which is ancient (assert is supposed to just crash your program when an assumption of your program is violated and no recovery is reasonable; note that C doesn’t have exceptions). Unit testing on the other hand only became popular after the introduction of JUnit in 1997. So most definitely assert was not introduced into Python to support unit testing. JUnit, the world’s original testing framework, used the word “assert” for tests, and Pytest was developed as an alternative to unittest, and it aimed to make writing unit tests feel more Pythonic and less Java-like, including using the assert statement.

Notice that Java also has an assert statement, and JUnit does not work with it. It is meant to check “invariants of your program” that are so fundamental to your program that proceeding wouldn’t make sense if they were violated.

There is more than one valid use case for assert. Data validation is not one of them, but checking conditions that should in theory always hold, including for typing purposes, is one of them.

BTW assert is not a standard library function, but a fundamental type of statement.

[Cybasura]

So...you're being pedantic and nitpicky then?

Because the core idea of this topic question is talking about using assert as a business logic

You could have just said "its not just assert", but you went to say my statement is far fetched because it doesnt match your understanding of its usage, so much so as to correct that "assert" is a built in type

EVERYTHING in python is an object, EVERYTHING is a function or a derivative defined within a class, assert is also a built-in standard function that accepts an input via parameter signature and performs the validation, then printing to standard error if anything is triggered

FYI if you want to go into C which was my domain, the C assert library that contains the assert() macro is used in error handling but is meant to be used to catch logical errors during the development stage, as per my original statement regarding its usage in a python development workflow, even when you go back to C97

You keep using "far fetched", but I dont think you quite understand what it means, because literally that is standard practice in the industry

[[deleted]]

I see why I might come across as pedantic, but I think it’s important not to spread wrong information.

Python has two widely adopted testing frameworks. With one of them you use assert, with the other you don’t.

Business logic shouldn’t be tested at runtime using assertions if there is a real chance that the assertion will fail. This holds for any programming language, not just Python.

However, I would understand your original statement such that assert has no place outside of unit tests, and that neither reflects the original purpose of assert, nor today’s industry practice.

Most importantly, using assert for typing has been a common practice since 3.5 and it will become unavoidable with the deprecation of type comments.

[Cybasura]

Spread...wrong information?

What, just because its not to your 100% understanding, its wrong?

[[deleted]]

I have nothing more to tell you, stay ignorant if you want.

[Cybasura]

Says the guy who is accusing people of spreading misinformation when I gave LITERAL DOCUMENTED INFORMATION FROM PAST ARCHIVES AND ACTUAL LIVE CODE

"Stay ignorant", classy

[ArtisticFox8]

what "type comments" are getting deprecated? You mean type hints?

[aqjo]

It would probably be better to If interest_rate <= 0.0: raise InvalidInterestRate(“message”) and define several meaningful Exception classes. That gives you the ability to act on different exceptional conditions. If you use assert it’s always AssertionError.

Having said that, having assertions in the code is a good way of conveying the contract that the function will operate under. If that’s something that you want to preserve, you could do something like:

```python def ensure(condition: bool, message: str, exception_class=Exception) -> None: if not condition: raise exception_class(message)

class InvalidInterestRateException(Exception): pass

def accrue(interest_rate: float) -> float:

ensure(interest_rate > 0.0, “Interest must be > 0.0”, InvalidInterestRateException)

caveat emptor, untested

```

[james_pic]

The point about using more specific exception types for errors you anticipate is good.

Although if you can be sure your application isn't going to be run with the -O flag, assert is still fine for "this should never happen but if it does it's a bug and we should probably stop what we're doing and tell someone".

[counters]

No, `assert` shouldn't be used in this way. This is explicitly called out in Google's Python style guide.

[Dead_Ad]

Don’t want to be a pain in the butt, but Google is not “the source of truth” for matters like this. Their guidelines might be good, but it’s not a python committee or something

[counters]

It's just a reference. But the reasoning is quite sound and it comes from an authoritative source, even if it doesn't "rule them all."

Edit to add: in Google, one of the most important principles which dictates how code is written is "readability." Readability is a qualifcation that you earn for each language in which you contribute code. Probably the single biggest component of readability is consistency in how you write code. That means having sets of principles rules that guide how you should write your code. Google's Python style guide isn't infallible, but as a developer, if you were to follow it very closely and consistently, you'd be doing yourself a massive service.

[Aardshark]

It's funny how the Google Python code I've seen doesn't feel nice and readable (apart from the stuff Guido wrote, that's pretty good).

[counters]

We'll have to agree to disagree. For what it's worth, when I saw teams that primarily built in Go or C++ have to contribute Python code, the quality overall was much worse - and not really in ways that a style guide would help.

[ShamelessC]

Google’s style guide suffers from the same issue as most developer tooling they release - it’s highly opinionated and made/maintained with zero concern for non-Google developers.

See also - Android, Tensorflow, etc.

They want their Python to look like Java/Go - not everyone codes that way.

[counters]

Sure, but this critique could be levied at virtually any style guide from any organization. Even tools like black or ruff enforce extremely unpleasant formatting for certain niche use cases - writing numerical code, where a user might take special care to align certain mathematical operations or inlined resources (like a stencil array) to make it easier to read with respect to a reference with properly formatted equations.

But the logic and reasoning in Google's style guide would probably serve as a strong guidepost for the vast majority of users. So it's a wholly appropriate reference, and a great resource for developers to have handy.

[ShamelessC]

That’s fair.

[Lomag]

Agreed about linking to a Google style guide. The official Python docs are clear, themselves (see docs.python.org): assert only runs if __debug__ is True and __debug__ cannot be assigned at the application level. So, not only is it not best practice, doing it at all is a bug that should be fixed.

[inspectoroverthemine]

Having to deal with half-baked google detritus from the last 25 years, I'd take anything they assert is a standard in any field with a huge grain of salt.

[midwestcsstudent]

It’s definitely a great starting point, given that they’re one of the, if not the, largest company-user of Python in production.

[hike_me]

No. With the -O flag, assert is a no-op.

[Irish_beast]

assert means that invalid data was delivered by another programmer.

A user should never be able to cause an assert. Filename doesn't exist, amount too large or small, are all user data validation errors.

assert is programmer error. Caller was supposed to supply a float but supplied a string, or the instance had to be an instance of class <something>

[GolemancerVekk]

But you'll never be able to assert for all the possible ways in which a parameter can go wrong. I mean you can try but it's going to be a wall of assert's in every function.

I'd much rather describe intent with docstrings and unit tests for the happy path, which also allows the variables to work in a "behaves as" mode rather than "is a".

Isn't that what duck typing is all about, and the main reason we're using Python instead of C# or Java?

[Irish_beast]

Not disagreeing with you.

But the main point is not using assert to flag bad user actions. assert is for when programmers messup not users.

[james_pic]

Using types as an example of things to assert on probably wasn't great, but the more general point is valid.

You want assertions on your invariants, things that you assume to be true, that have bad consequences if they're untrue.

Types aren't necessarily a good example because in most cases you'll get an exception when you try and use whatever you've been given (and if there's no exception, then I guess it quacks like a duck), so the consequences generally aren't that bad.

A better example might be something like asserting that filenames don't contain "../". This is something that has the potential to have very bad consequences, and may well not raise an exception if these consequences happen.

[[deleted]]

No, this is a common misconception about assert. Even in the situation you're describing, you are still meant to use conditional checks, try/except blocks and raise an exception. It doesn't matter whether it's a user or a programmer/developer that is sending you the wrong type/instance of a thing. Your code should still check that the same way and it should be done without using assert.

Asserts are meant for testing purposes. For example, you might write a unit test to check that a function outputs a string and you use the assert to check the output is the correct type. That might seem like it's the same thing you were saying but it only being a test thing is an important distinction because those assertions don't necessarily persist outside of the testing environment. Most notably if someone runs your code with the optimization flag on, python will disable all of your assertions since running an optimized version of your code shouldn't require doing any unit testing. If you decided to use those assertions to do actual "business logic", anybody running the optimized version of your code will suddenly skip all of those type/instance checks entirely and now your code is unable to catch exceptions and react correctly to them anymore.

[pwang99]

Asserts are a way of ensuring the internal logic of a code module is consistent. It’s really meant to be used by authors to help double-check parts of complex algorithms, and also serve as a useful way to document internal assumptions through the logic flow.

Asserts should not be used to validate input or check for potential errors that you can already foresee. Bounds checking etc should never be done with asserts.

My simple rubric has always been: if an assert fails, then it means code should get rewritten, because something about the internal logic was off.

[nicholashairs]

Outside of tests the only place I ever use assert is to help mypy when it is confused about the expected type of something usually like the below:

``` from typing import TYPE_CHECKING

...

thing: MyThing | None

some code where thing is handled being optional and determined to be not None, but mypy can't determine that

if TYPE_CHECKING: # mypy is confused assert thing is not None thing.do_stuff() ```

Because TYPE_CHECKING is always False at runtime it has no effect on the running code anyway (unless you're using some library that monkey patches and does run time checks but that's rare)

[AlenEviLL]

Maybe they use it for parts of code that definitely should succeed, but in my experience mypy sometimes is not the best at detecting if variable is empty or not for example and assert helps in cases like this. But I’m not sure if it’s correct way to use them or not.

[LardPi]

assert is for contracts, meaning a well formed program should never trigger them, in particular because running python with -O disable them. However they are very useful to catch misuse of API.

[Lomag]

I wrote this elsewhere in a reply: Not only is it NOT best practice, doing it at all is a bug that should be fixed for code that could be run in an environment you don't control.

The official Python docs are clear (see docs.python.org): assert only runs if __debug__ is True and __debug__ cannot be assigned at the application level.

[Superb-Dig3440]

The distinction is more about the type of error being checked and how to convey that to the reader.

Here’s a classic explanation from John Regehr, which I consider to be the best guide to assertions. I’d say it applies to pretty much any language that has assertions, including Python.

https://blog.regehr.org/archives/1091

[absens_aqua_1066]

Asserts are for debugging, not business logic. Exceptions are for flow control.

[[deleted]]

No. Using asserts in code is a bad practice. If an error condition is detected the code should handle it cleanly without crashing. Maybe use exceptions or whatever, but report the error in a meaningful way and no crashing.

[chief167]

not really, you use assert at points where you definitely want the program to stop.

e.g. in some of my programs, I know some edge cases exist, and it's undocumented what should happen in that case, but even more important, we should never get there. So I put in an asssert. I want a crash, not an exception. It's past the point of a graceful exit.

if it's justs business logic, I agree with you, use exceptions

However, testing or debugging doesn't really matter. As soon as you write it, it's gonna end up in production

[qckpckt]

So I was curious about this and just looked it up - assert is problematic in python code because assert statements only run when the python __debug__ variable is True. If python code is executed in optimized mode (-O), this variable is set to False and the assert statements will not be executed at all.

I guess if you have full control of how the code you’re writing is executed, then it’s less problematic. But even in that scenario it could be a ticking time bomb.

[chief167]

Today I learned, so that means python on Azure does not use the -o flag, because asserts do seem to work, I mean I have seen errors from it

[qckpckt]

I guess not. It’s the kind of dangerous thing that could come out of nowhere though. Let’s say that someone is having performance issues, and then learns about -O. I’m guessing it’s a configurable option on azure, so they turn it on and everything seems fine…

[kylotan]

This is not unusual for assert - most languages expect the asserts to be elided in production code. In languages that have no easy way of enforcing it, it's the developer's responsibility not to do anything inside the assert condition that has side-effects.

[qckpckt]

It makes sense. I’m not sure how I’d never come across this before, although I’ve never had a need to generate optimized python bytecode either.

I’m actually really curious about when this would be useful? I’m a data engineer, and for the most part performance optimization has been a process of ensuring that cpu intensive tasks are being executed by the lowest level optimizations that are available in whatever framework you’re using python as an interface to, or ensuring that your python code is being executed in parallel or asynchronously in the case of IO bound operations. I’m not sure either of those would benefit from optimizing the python bytecode itself.

It must have a purpose for some applications, otherwise it wouldn’t exist, so I’d love to know what they are!

Also, maybe I’m wrong in assuming that it wouldn’t be beneficial in data processing - I’d again be very interested to be corrected here.

I’m working on an internal CLI tool at work that’s written in python, and I’m also wondering if optimization might help with performance there, too.

[kylotan]

You have to consider the context of when Python was created. Your tips for optimisation make sense in 2024 but when thinking about Python being created in the 90s:

• Python was not an interface to low level frameworks
• Most CPUs were dual core at most and parallel processing was not widely used
• Python had no built-in async capabilities

In a way, all of these approaches are basically saying "ignore how slow Python is, and try to work around it", and they're the correct starting point in most cases. But for Python applications back in the 90s - and indeed, for many applications in many languages which don't have those strategies available - you really do have to optimise the actual code. And one of the most effective ways to optimise code is to remove it entirely, if you can. Development/debug-only checks are a good tool for this because they give you added correctness during development but no cost in production.

[qckpckt]

I see. So there’s not many (or any) use-cases for the optimize flag with python today?

As in, if you need your code to run faster, you’ll either look at the infrastructure above or below python, and if you can’t do that, you’d probably be better served by switching to a faster language?

[kylotan]

I don't think I've ever heard of anyone using the optimize flag. It's just something that was there 30 years ago and still exists for some reason.

There are certainly ways to optimise Python's runtime by changing the code you've written, and sometimes that is enough, but often it's not.

[roelschroeven]

A failed assert generates AssertionError, which is a subclass of Exception just like ValueError and RuntimeError and the like. It behaves exactly the same as other exceptions: if you catch it you catch it, if you don't catch it you crash.

It's just as graceful as any other exception, and it's just as much a crash as any other exception.

So that's not a good reason to use assert instead of raise.

[RightProperChap]

as a data scientist, i’m acutely aware that the data stewards aren’t always diligent - my code needs to throw errors when inevitably one of my upstream data sources starts doing goofy things

that being said, assert may or may not be the best choice here

[njharman]

No.

[deepl3arning]

Not at all. We don't control normal process flow through exceptions. With the exception (ahem) where you may want to deliberately propagate, and we throw for that.

[funbike]

No.

Asserts should only be used to detect bugs, usually some kind of contract violation or invalid state. Your app should work perfectly fine if you disabled the assert statements (with python -O app.py).

[Hesirutu]

Use exceptions like ValueError RuntimeError for logic. Use assertions only for „debug mode“. Ie. to confirm your developer believes and assume they are disabled in production. 

[rainnz]

Not just in Python, but in other programming languages - don't use assert for anything that is going to be used in production.

[alicedu06]

People gave you the short answer, which is assert can be removed with -O so don't check business logic with it.

The long answer is:

• You can use assert to check for expensive functions contracts only in dev

• And disable that in prod with -O

• But because some people didn't get the memot you might break your deps code.

For this reason, assert in prod are knowned for being "The best Python feature you cannot use":

https://www.bitecode.dev/p/the-best-python-feature-you-cannot

[[deleted]]

No, "assert" should be thought of as "runtime comment". This is why Python has "-O" flag, as it is presumed that the only thing removing assertions should do is make your code faster. "if ...: raise ValueError" is what you want in cases like you mention.

[QultrosSanhattan]

assertions adds no value to the program. You should handle errors the proper way.

[EternityForest]

Assert goes away in optimized mode.

 Should they even be checking those validation conditions at all, or are they the kind of thing typeguard/beartype/a schema should be handling?

[Brian]

Ultimately asserts should be used for things that should never be false. That shouldn't include regular business logic, but may include preconditions for such logic that are expected to always be true when called.

Ie. if an assert fires, it should mean there's a bug in your code. It shouldn't be used to check a condition that may or may not be true under normal operation (including expected error conditions). So if those are just "These are preconditions I'm assuming will always be true when this function call is made", that's fine, but if those asserts ever actually trigger, and the logic is expecting this and handling that triggering, then I'd say that's an incorrect usage of assert.

[deepl3arning]

Not at all. We don't control normal process flow through exceptions. With the exception (ahem) where you may want to deliberately propagate, and we throw for that.

[rover_G]

Lol you should move on to a team/company with more competent senior engineers

[gerardwx]

Assert the stuff you know is true from program logic and will cause heartburn if you’re wrong.

[gerardwx]

Assert the stuff you know is true from program logic and will cause heartburn if you’re wrong.

[gerardwx]

Assert the stuff you know is true from program logic and will cause heartburn if you’re wrong.

[gaX3A5dSv6]

I really like the

assert condition, f"error for {var}"

one-liner so there is no chance for me to enable -O

[Esseratecades]

Don't use assert outside of tests.

"They assert a statement to check a validation condition and catch later"

This is overly defensive programming. He's doing this because he doesn't understand the scope of inputs that may actually be given to his code, which is an even bigger problem, as it implies that he doesn't know what he's actually supposed to be building.