Re: Assertion vs Exception Handling

From:
James Kanze <james.kanze@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:57:42 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
<ebe0dab6-f442-4a8c-9f34-fbc10bd4f560@g4g2000yqa.googlegroups.com>
On Mar 15, 10:38 pm, Ian Collins <ian-n...@hotmail.com> wrote:

On 03/16/10 11:23 AM, James Kanze wrote:

On Mar 12, 11:13 pm, "Leigh Johnston"<le...@i42.co.uk> wrote:

"Ian Collins"<ian-n...@hotmail.com> wrote in message


     [...]

Actually I think embedded software is one of the exceptions
where a higher degree of defensiveness is required
(especially where safety is a concern) and a reboot is
usually the best outcome for unexpected state. On the
other hand I have worked in the mobile phone industry and
from what I can recall we didn't use release mode asserts
much.


I think it depends on where your program is situated. If
it's in the phone itself, I can see not using asserts much,
except maybe in a very few of the critical parts. A mobile
phone, today, is pretty much the same thing as a games
console:-). But the software I've seen on the server side
definitely makes extensive use of asserts; if anything goes
wrong, you want to fail brutally, so that the backup systems
can detect the failure and take over.


My example was from the infrastructure side of mobile (or
fixed line) networks. The device in question can shut down
and exchange or base station, so it must "fail brutally" if an
inconsistent state is detected.


That's been my experience as well (and telecoms is doubtlessly
the domain where I have the most experience). But I must be
getting confused with the attributions; I didn't think it was
you who said "On the other hand I have worked in the mobile
phone industry and from what I can recall we didn't use release
mode asserts much", which was the statement I was responding to.

--
James Kanze

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