We didn't have debug-only asserts. Asserts were enable in the software we verified and shipped.

It took a while for developers to be able to determine when a situation called for an assert, and when it called for what might be called traditional error handling.

The strategy of shipping with asserts enabled kind of worried some folks. They were concerned that it might assert in front of a customer. I understand the concern, but in our domain, if you're doing an OB exam with the ultrasound system and you have a choice of asserting or showing a femur length measurement of -1039cm, which is better?

We didn't have many asserts in the field. We had a lab where we had about 25 - 30 ultrasound machines running embedded tests constantly. Each machine was connected to a JTAG debug board, so we could flash new code into the system and so we could set a breakpoint on the assert routine itself and save a "core dump" for subsequent debugging without having to try to reproduce the system state that led to the assert.

The whole lash-up evolved over a period of years. It worked well, so far as I know.

One mitigating factor was that our systems were class B devices. They were always supposed to be used by a medically trained professional that had the ability to take over if the system asserted, or power failed, etc.

Happy to try to answer any questions about this.

You have to help other developers understand how and when to use asserts, and then you have to test the developed device very well, so that it won't assert in the field.

Yet if it does assert in the field, it's highly likely that it will get a lot of management attention.

https://www.amazon.com/Object-Oriented-Programming-COMMON-LI...

I attended many TOC conferences in the 90s and early 2000s. Eli Goldratt was famous for saying "Tell me how you'll measure me, and I'll tell you how I will behave."

The computer had 2048 words of erasable magnetic-core memory and 36,864 words of read-only core rope memory. Both had cycle times of 11.72 microseconds. The memory word length was 16 bits: 15 bits of data and one odd-parity bit. The CPU-internal 16-bit word format was 14 bits of data, one overflow bit, and one sign bit (ones' complement representation). [1]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer

RACI is an acronym derived from the four key responsibilities most typically used: responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed. It is used for clarifying and defining roles and responsibilities in cross-functional or departmental projects and processes.

I wish more people briefly defined acronyms at first usage in a document.

Buy enough parts for expected product life, make good use of the time you didn't waste on scrambling, and when your product is EOL sell any left-over parts on the secondhand markets.

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