Ask HN: Is it wrong to release an app with assertions everywhere in the code? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is it wrong to release an app with assertions everywhere in the code?

2 pointsamichail8 comments

Assume that the these assertions have negligible impact on performance but can cause the app to crash.

So, in brief: "Is it wrong to release an app ...[with code]... that will cause it to crash"

Uh, well "wrong" is a morality judgement, which is subjective. It could be said to be less than optimal. It may well be wrong by your users, but you'd have to survey them yourself.

You should try and fix bugs you know exist before you launch, unless you decide their severity (ease of repro, impact (is it a CtD, recoverable bug, visual defect, etc.), etc.) is acceptable. In the event you launch with known bugs, the responsible thing to do is to clearly document them so users can know what to expect. All software has unknown bugs in it, but if you know they're there, you probably should address them in some way.

All apps have bugs, but these assertions would allow the developer to more easily find and fix them for the next update.

And maybe allowing the app to continue running in an unexpected state (instead of crashing) is not a good idea?

Consider the end user experience; would you want to use an app that crashes? Poor performance can be forgiven(especially if the end user doesn't have anything to compare against) but an unstable app will automatically be worse than any other alternatives. I would recommend troubleshooting to find out why code assertions are causing a crash because to me that's an indicator of a larger problem.

Open communication can also help manage the end user expectations. I personally like and have been inspired by the Dev blogs for the game Factorio. For example here is a blog post from them about their new(at the time) Crash log uploading feature that some people weirdly didn't like. https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-231

That's a judgement call you have to make. You know what your app means for your users, and will have to decide whether your crashes are OK or not.

Personally, if it was my app, I would just fix the issue. State should be clear. If state is not clear, then the application is probably not well architected.

I think logging the exceptions and then returning an informative error message to the user might be the better approach here.

Keep assertions on even in production unless you have compelling arguments for the opposite. E.g. people might die if the process terminates.

Malicious intent aside, there is nothing wrong with releasing.

in javascript i do assertions in my parameters on each function, this is to ensure correctness in dev and prod.

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