title: Why should assertions not be used for argument checking in public methods?
body: <p>Well, I have never really worked with assertions in my limited experience with Java and was wondering why I have read on a lot of sites and a lot of books that deal with assertions, the same warning that assert statements should not be used for argument checking in public methods?</p>
  <p>I was wondering whether this had something to do with the order of execution of the assert statement relative to the other statements in Java.</p>