Questions about using `assert` in Java

[Daohan Qu]

Dear developers,

I'm a graduate student doing software engineering research.
Recently, I came across some interesting facts about Java assert​
statements and have a few questions to ask.

Although the assert​ keyword has been around for a long time and
is handy for invariant checks, it does not seem to be widely used.
For example, in the famous j.u.c​ packages, nearly all assert​
statements are commented out [1].

My questions are, should assert​ be heavily used in Java programs,
especially in production code? And should we enable them in the
production code?

By the way, I have read a useful article about using assertions in
Java [2], but it does not provide clear answers to my questions above.

Thank you in advance!

[1] https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Aopenjdk%2Fjdk+assert+path%3A%2F%5Esrc%5C%2Fjava.base%5C%2Fshare%5C%2Fclasses%5C%2Fjava%5C%2Futil%5C%2Fconcurrent%5C%2F%2F&type=code
[2] https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/technotes/guides/language/assert.html

Regards,
Daohan Qu

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