Awesome Reviewers

Use exceptions rather than assertions for handling critical error conditions that need to be caught in production. Assertions should only be used for development-time invariant checking that should never occur in production code.

Bad:

assert bestAssignment != -1 : "Failed to assign vector to centroid";

Good:

if (bestAssignment == -1) {
    throw new IllegalStateException("Failed to assign vector to centroid");
}

Assertions are disabled by default in production environments, which means critical error conditions could be silently ignored. This can lead to data corruption or system instability. Instead:

1. Use exceptions for error conditions that:
   • Need to be handled by calling code
   • Represent invalid states that could occur in production
   • Should trigger error reporting/monitoring
2. Reserve assertions for:
   • Validating internal implementation invariants
   • Checking preconditions during development/testing
   • Documenting assumptions that should never be violated

When choosing between exceptions and assertions, ask “Should this error be caught and handled in production?” If yes, use an exception.

This site is open source. Improve this page.