Java assertions underused

Question

I\'m wondering why the assert keyword is so underused in Java? I\'ve almost never seen them used, but I think they\'re a great idea. I certainly much prefer the

Answer 1

As others have stated: assertions are not appropriate for validating user input.

If you are concerned with verbosity, I recommend you check out a library I wrote: https://github.com/cowwoc/requirements.java/. It'll allow you to express these checks using very little code, and it'll even generate the error message on your behalf:

requireThat("name", value).isNotNull();

and if you insist on using assertions, you can do this too:

assertThat("name", value).isNotNull();

The output will look like this:

java.lang.NullPointerException: name may not be null