[TIP] A rare philosophical thought

[Brett Cannon]

On Fri, Aug 1, 2008 at 8:10 PM, C. Titus Brown <ctb at msu.edu> wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 02, 2008 at 12:59:29PM +1000, Ben Finney wrote:
> -> "Noah Gift" <noah.gift at gmail.com> writes:
> -> >  What is wrong with a plain assert?
> ->
> -> Nothing, as far as it goes. The main improvements people usually seem
> -> to want over a plain assert is: standard rich failure messages for
> -> common assertions, saying what was expected; and the addition of
> -> fixtures and other improvements to approach the Don't Repeat Yourself
> -> ideal.
>
> Aaaaaaand... the real killer is that asserts are disabled in optimized
> code, so if you use assert and want to run your tests under
> optimization, they will not test anything.
>
> This is actually the one thing about the current assert statement for
> which I don't see a simple workaround.  Either you have to introduce a
> new keyword (hah!) or a new command-line option, which I think is also a
> bad idea.
>
> And let me say,
>
> I HATE UNITTEST.  UNITTEST IS EVIL.  UNITTEST NEEDS TO BE REPLACED.
>

Hallelujah. An overhauled unit testing module really should come about
that is simpler and utilizes more of what Python offers currently
(e.g., context managers).

-Brett