Question

QUESTION 6: Advanced Java Programming John is an inexperienced programmer who doesn't understand the difference between Asser- tions and Exception Handling. Discuss the differences between each from the perspective of a programmer, and provide an example of when each would be used. Total: 10

Answer 1

Assertions are intended to be used as a way of identifying programming errors or bugs - they are used for internal logic checks. Exception are for error or exceptional condition (like invalid input, network issues, etc) which may not be under the control of your program or code.

Assertions can be enabled/disabled globally or class wise and it is usually considered a good practice to remove them out of production code if logical validation is done. Exception however are meant to be kept in production code to handle conditions which are not under our control.

Examples:

Assertions can be used to check if two variables are same or not:

asset a!=b;

If a is not equal to b, assertion fails.

Exception can be thrown if the array index i goes beyond the array length l:

If( i>=l)

{throw new Exception("Index Out Of Bounds");}