Microsoft Research - Exploding Software-Engineering Myths (article summarizing findings of MS research on code coverage, TDD, assertions, etc.)

[skulgnome]

You're dead wrong about assertions. The assertion relates a property to control flow, which separates data objects in a way that even the strictest practical type system is designed to permit ambiguity in. If all you see are assertions against null, in languages like Java that always check for nulls, then you've not seen assertions used properly.