[filleduchaos]

Maybe it's just me but a note from the developer stating why it's important that some particular value be present is exactly the sort of help I would like when looking at a call stack that's dozens of levels deep. Especially considering that a panic terminates execution - I very much would like to know what was so critical that the program had to preemptively crash up front and not after pawing through code and docs.

I think it's pretty odd to use a quick example someone rattled off on a web forum to explain a function's behaviour as evidence of its usefulness or lack thereof, as if the only thing a person could possibly write in a freeform error message is "Our goose finder should always find a goose".

[blegr]

I see your point, but my experience is that you need the stack trace first, and the developer’s explanation second. Asserts crashing with a message that makes perfect sense in its context but is completely useless for debugging are the bane of my workweek.

Now I appreciate a clear explanation for an uncommon assert and for example, OpenCV could do with more of those, but in most functions, seeing the line that throws the error is enough to understand.